SXSW 2010: The Location Services Showdown

The SXSW Location Showdown Icon

Days into SXSW it’s clear that location based services are fighting to take the lead spot as the thousands of Interactive festival attendees are all using the location products. Foursquare and Gowalla are competing for the top spot, but by now it’s clear that Foursquare has become the defacto service despite Gowalla’s strikingly good looks. Whrrl, a service that you probably can’t remember how to spell the first time around, has street teams trying to get users to install their app.
Read the rest of this entry »

C-SPAN Gets Social for the Dem Convention

Have you been paying attention to the Democratic National Convention? It’s pretty much the only thing in the news for the entire week so if you haven’t heard about it you have probably been living under a rock (or some similar form of shelter). There are a bunch of sites covering the events but when it comes to the mainstream press there aren’t many doing a great job as it applies to social media.

If you haven’t read about it elsewhere, C-SPAN in partnership with JESS3 (who is also drives the images of the Social Times) and New Media Strategies released a site which has full coverage of the convention from C-SPAN as well all other sources around the web. It is not a single sourced coverage but is instead an aggregation of everything which is going on around the country.

The site is significant because it places blogs on the same platform as traditional media. For the boring old C-SPAN, this site appears to be a complete shift from the company’s more traditional past. Included in the site are live streams from QIK and best of all an aggregator of all the Twitter activity surrounding the DNC as well as the RNC. The difference between this and Politweets, another political Twitter aggregator, is that this site has a basic level of statistics about the tweets taking place.

Take a look at the DNC08 Twitter Page to see more DNC coverage. As the coverage concludes later this week, look to the site to give full coverage of the RNC convention. It’s a competition between the parties for building the most buzz and we are only half way through the process. This week the Democrats have taken the stage, continue to watch the coverage through next week on the RNC Convention Hub.

Upcoming Events

Freemium Summit

March 26, 2010 | San Francisco, CA

Freemium Summit Logo

Mediabistro's first Freemium Summit focuses on exploring what it takes to succeed under the freemium business model.

Think Mobile

April 7-8, 2010 | New York, NY

Think Mobile Logo

Mobilize your business with mobile marketing, apps, video, and content.

Social Gaming Summit

May 6-7, 2010 | San Francisco, CA
December 1-2, 2010 | New York, NY

Social Gaming Summit Logo

Explore the intersection of games and the social web.

Social Developer Summit

June 29, 2010 | San Francisco, CA

Social Developer Summit Logo

A meeting of the technically social.