For better or worse, the just-concluded SXSW Interactive festival in Austin, Texas carries the weight of massive geek expectations. The big reason has to do with Twitter: it was at SXSWi in 2007 that the now-ubiquitous messaging service first gained wide exposure. The buzz from Austin traveled far and wide throughout the blogosphere and, up in Washington, I was inspired to join Twitter three years ago yesterday. The rest is history.
Each subsequent year, the question buzzing around the Austin Convention Center has been the same: "What's the new Twitter? What's the new big thing?" With a few years' distance, it's clear that the rise of Twitter is sui generis, like the blogosphere itself. SXSW is a great launching pad for new services (here's one from this year called Lunch.com), but no law of the universe dictates that every March in Central Texas, something new and wonderful will take world by storm.
And a funny thing happened this year: I don't recall anybody asking about the next big thing. I think I know the reason, and it is not that there wasn't something to talk about. It's that the next big thing was obvious from the first day. I'm talking about the widespread adoption of Foursquare and Gowalla, two "geosocial" applications which happened to debut at SXSW last year. Like Twitter, the idea behind each of these is dead simple once you've absorbed it, but a bit of a head-scratcher if you haven't experienced it firsthand.
The short explanation is, you "check in" to different locations you visit on a free iPhone or Android app, which knows where you are thanks to GPS or cell tower triangulation (hence "geo"). You make connections with friends; out of privacy considerations, both individuals have to agree, so in this way it is more like Facebook than Twitter. If you don't find the place you're at in a list, just add it. If you visit a place enough times, you become the "mayor" (Foursquare) or climb the top-ten list for each place (Gowalla). If you visit enough of the right kind of places, you unlock badges, or achievements. And of course they integrate seamlessly with Twitter. (For a recent, if not state-of-the-art, comparison see this Mashable post.)
The competitive nature is a big part of their growing popularity, at least among tech geeks. This also means it is wont to be gamed. The fuzzy rules determining when one becomes "mayor" of a place on Foursquare are a bit like Google's search algorithm; you have to figure out what works -- and what gets you in trouble. Check in too many places in too short a time period, and you'll get a warning. As far as I can tell, you can check into a place you have already left... or never visited. In fact, as you read this, I am the "mayor" of a place that does not exist: Room 20A at the Austin Convention Center. Why? Well... why not?
Foursquare and Gowalla took off this year because of a collection of related factors. One is the network effect: after a year to give a try, many more people had a version of one or the other on their phone (most likely Foursquare, the current leader (see this "fight night" poster by NMS partner Jess3)). Two, you can see where your friends checked in recently. Three, of course, the competitive nature.
But this week I finally saw a fourth one that made practical sense: the capability to show you what is currently popular, nearby. On Foursquare, this is called "Trending Now". Let's say your discussion panel didn't turn out to be as interesting as you'd like -- Trending Now offers alternatives. Or, let's say that discussion panels are over for the day, and you're walking up to Sixth Street for a drink with friends. So, what's hopping? Conversely, what's too crowded right now? Thanks to Trending Now, human beings finally have sonar -- or something like it.
The catch may be that these applications seem particularly well-suited to a conference like SXSW where everyone is in close proximity and has approximately the same interests. The makers of Foursquare and Gowalla are thinking much bigger, and both are striking deals with real-world locations. I'll be looking closely to see whether Trending Now becomes more useful when I fly back to DC at the end of the week. I'll be looking to see whether more of my friends join Foursquare. And I'll be looking to see if I join Gowalla... I haven't, yet. But getting on a top-ten list sounds easier than becoming the mayor of, say, Metro Center. On the other hand, I don't think I need two.
So what's the next big thing? Augmented reality is always a topic of conversation. I didn't hear about any great new augmented reality applications this year, but they're coming. I think the biggest problem with such applications right now is simply the difficult integration with data sources. There are not quite enough geo-tagged locations on Wikipedia or Flickr to make such applications useful.
One possibility: Foursquare and Gowalla may become content generators for augmented reality applications in the future. When will that happen? How about we pencil it in for SXSWi 2011.