In the hype! SXSW: Foursquare Scores Despite Its Flaws. Before this year’s SXSW event kicked off, a number of bloggers suggested that this year’s breakout hit might be foursquare, a new location-based social application with a gaming twist that was created by the guys behind the now-defunct Dodgeball service.
As the ‘interactive’ section of the festival winds down, I think it’s safe to say that foursquare was not the must-have app of SXSW the way Twitter was two years ago. But it had a strong showing, and once I actually figured out which of my friends were using the service (which is more difficult than it sounds), I found foursquare to be an indispensable app during my time here. foursquare’s primary function is to help you figure out where your friends are. Users frequently ‘check-in’ with the app to update their current location, which is then broadcast to their friends. Aside from a basic ‘friend’ system, foursquare’s social features are pretty limited compared to services like Loopt and Brightkite. SXSW 2009 will be known as the “SMS & location explosion SXSW” This week tons of people were asking me “what’s the ‘Twitter’ of this year’s SXSW conference.
See, two years ago at SXSW Twitter exploded onto the scene. Looking back at this year’s conference (pretty tough cause I partied a little too hard with my new friends at Rackspace) it’s clear that this year is going to be remembered for when location exploded onto the scene. First, everyone’s iPhones didn’t work very well for the first two days of the conference. Turned out that AT&T’s network was overloaded.
I met the guy who fixed much of that problem on Sunday (they doubled the network capacity and turned on some new wireless bandwidth). Reasons why. If Twitter asks "What are you doing?
", foursquare asks, "Where are you and what's on your mind? " The reason Twitter blew up a few years ago at SxSW is because everybody there joined it. Everybody was going to parties and tweeting where they were. Back then it was all new, but Twitter has evolved into something almost spammy, at least to the 1% of people in the bay area that live and breathe by it. foursquare is different though. In Austin this year, the foursquare app is very useful to see where everybody is all the time. The thing that distinguishes this app from other location-based social networks like Brightkite and loopt is that there are merit badges you can earn for different accomplishments.
In Austin this year, there are 16 special badges you can earn for going to 16 different parties. This is the famous photo of the founders of Dodgeball, the deceased Google geo-location property. Lots of people are saying that this is the big hit of SxSW, and I agree. Dodgeball founder pegs Google in the face with Foursquare. Each year, around the time of the SXSW festival people start wondering out loud what the “next Twitter” will be.
You see, the quickly spreading micro-messaging service really got its start at the Austin,Texas-based festival two years ago, and has been growing ever since. Of course, last year’s Twitter was, well, Twitter. But this year there may be another service that catches on — if it can get approval in Apple’s App Store. The service, called Foursquare, may be very familiar to you if you used the service Dodgeball in the past. Dodgeball, was an early location-based social service made popular among the tech elite in the San Francisco Bay Area, that Google bought in 2005.
Now, one of those founders, Dennis Crowley, is back with Foursquare. As I said, it’s very similar to Dodgeball, but with a few key differences. That said, text messaging is still the preferred means to interact with the service. Companies find ways to launch iPhone apps at SXSW. AUSTIN, Texas--Given that you can't walk more than a couple feet at the South by Southwest Interactive (SXSWi) festival here without stumbling into someone tapping away on one iPhone application or another, it's easy to forget that just a year ago, there was no such thing as an official iPhone "app.
" But now, of course, iPhone apps are one of the hottest technology segments of all. And since SXSWi is ground zero for cutting edge social media and the people who are often the earliest adopters of such technology, a series of companies have used the conference as the launching pad for their own apps for Apple's ubiquitous smartphone. That's not to say, however, that Apple is entirely unconcerned with developers' needs. In some cases, knowing people inside the company seems to help. And that, of course, would have been its own nightmare for FourSquare given that AT&T's service--which is what iPhone users are relying on-- has been spotty at best .