Twitter blowed up at SXSW 2007

by Scott Beale / Laughing Squid

Twitter was the clear winner of SXSW, with more people talking about it than anything else. That is not, however, to say that it’s better, it just had more of a presence. This is partly due to the fact that Twitter had giant LCDs setup all around the convention center that streamed messages from SXSW. It was interesting to watch all of the comments flowing in from attendees.

by Scott Beale / Laughing Squid

Things reached a tipping point last month at the South by Southwest conference in Austin, Texas. The Twitter people cleverly placed two 60-inch plasma screens in the conference hallways, exclusively streaming Twitter messages. Hundreds of conference-goers kept tabs on each other via constant twitters. Panelists and speakers mentioned the service, and the bloggers in attendance touted it. Soon everyone was buzzing and posting about this new thing that was sort of instant messaging and sort of blogging and maybe even a bit of sending a stream of telegrams.

by Scott Beale / Laughing Squid

AUSTIN, Texas--One question heard more than any other this week at South by Southwest Interactive (SXSWi), "Are you on Twitter?" I have to admit that I'm not--yet. So, the first time I heard the question, which was literally as I was getting off the plane and encountering dozens of familiar faces, I wasn't sure what these folks were talking about. But there they were, three people in a small, little circle, all checking their Twitter.

by Scott Beale / Laughing Squid

A lot of folks are using twitter here at SXSW, if you’re not familiar with it, it’s an online and mobile chat room, where you can add (or remove) the contacts you prefer. It’s a social network, where individuals can share their status, location, or communicate directly with others. Since this is an opt in and opt out model, there should be more difficulty for marketers to spam the site, or users will remove them.

by Scott Beale / Laughing Squid

Twitter staffers Jack and Alex tell me that the site, which normally carries around 20 thousand messages a day, broke 60 thousand a day this weekend. This traffic boost should add a strong layer of new permanent users. In the next year, Twitter could make a Facebook-sized blowup among the general public.

by Scott Beale / Laughing Squid

We totally won the SXSW Web Awards last Sunday! That's me, Jack, Ev, and Jason on stage with Ze Frank. Jack gave our acceptance speech which went exactly like this, "We'd like to thank you in 140 characters or less. And we just did!" Then we we walked offstage and partied in Austin. Now we're back in the office making sure we're worthy of the honor. Thanks SXSW! We had a blast.

by Scott Beale / Laughing Squid

GETV just posted a great video of Violet Blue interviewing sex hacker Kyle Machulis, who during SXSW Interactive 2007 wrote a script to activate a Rez Trance Vibrator based on Twitter activity via the Twitter API, allowing you to feel Twitter posts.

On the last day of SXSW Interactive 2007 I was having lunch with a bunch of people at Jo’s, including Mike Hudack of blip.tv. We knew that the closing party would probably be crowed and have loud music, making it hard for people to socialize, so Mike and I decided to organize our own little Drinkup at Ginger Man, hosted blip.tv and Laughing Squid.

So at 1:30pm I sent out a single Twitter post and let it grow from there. Word spread via Twitter and offline and by the end of the night, our last minute event was packed with our friends. We had our own little Twittermob going on.