Good times must always come to an end.   The 2010 South by Southwest Interactive is officially in the can.  Looking back at the week spent in Austin, one of the most biggest non-stories is the growth to nearly 15,000 attendees.

Boosted by a 40% surge, reports indicate that for the first time ever, the Interactive part of the festival surpassed attendance of SXSW.

Relationships. Relationships. Relationships.  Nearly a week later and new friendships were developed.   Before you know it good-byes turn into Twitter follows and Facebook adds.

Location-based services really stick out as the big winner in Austin, outshining Twitter at one of the biggest tech conventions.  Foursquare and Gowalla went head-to-head, throwing parties nearly a few feet from one another.

SXSW is a wise place for the location-based services to jump off.  Attendees tend to be early adopters and influences that can help to create product buzz.  Every where I turned around, attendees were checking in with either location-based service along with tweeting and checking in with Facebook.

Don’t get it wrong.  Twitter managed to steal a moment in the sun announcing the launch of @anywhere.  The new program is a framework allowing developers to integrate Twitter into their sites.

An overrall success.  The conference helped create new friendships, which in the end is the most important thing you ever get out of any conference.

What experience did you have?  Will you be checking in?

Tags: @anywhere, foursquare, gowalla, sxsw

This entry was posted on Saturday, March 27th, 2010 at 1:19 am and is filed under Featured, New Media. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.