SXSW Alistair Lennie March 23, 2012

South by Southwest (SXSW) is a set of film, interactive and music festivals and conferences that take

place every spring (usually in March) in Austin, Texas, US. Below are some themes we witnessed

across the selection of Interactive presentations we were able to attend.

Real World Social Activation

It seems that one topic that almost everyone at SXSW was talking about this year was the collision

of the digital and physical worlds.

New technologies will leverage newly accessible data gleaned from user app usage, local search

results, social streams and location to speak with people on their own terms, in ways that add

meaning and convenience.

The start-up that gained the most buzz @SXSW was Highlight - a mobile ambient awareness app.

When you are near another Highlight user, who is your Facebook friend or that you have friends or

interests in common with, Highlight sends you a push notification and lets you connect with them.

Similar companies in the space: Glancee, Gauss, Ban.jo and Sonar.

Clearly, with web usage data, personal social graph data from Facebook and other social data from

Google, contextual data and customer relationship management (CRM) data, there is a lot of

potential information to play with. The end game is the ultimate in personalization: a new business-

to-individual communication model.

Pandora (internet radio) talked of their geo-location evolution. Indie artists, which make up 70% of

their music library, will be able know where their songs have been thumbed-up, thus identifying the

advocates and informing future tour destinations.

Better location and social models based on location awareness mixed with the data created by such

interaction theoretically could have a profound effect on user behaviour. In addition, brands and

retailers could find this information useful.

Integrating branded services into „calm technologies‟ represents a long-term future in this space,

e.g., Apple‟s Siri and Foursquare‟s Radar service.

Shifting Viewers To Users

Several talks touched upon the trend of passive viewing evolving into active experiences, i.e., how

brands are moving viewers from lean back to lean towards in order to create enhanced viewing

experiences that capitalize on user interaction and create an „instant water cooler‟ effect.

Group.Me partnered with MTV and Oxygen to enable users to create special groups with

their friends, who will then receive additional content and live access to personalities via

chat and con-call functions.

The „Twitter Tracker‟ is now an integrated part of the MTV VMA and EMA viewing

experience. Viewers can track their favourite celebrities‟ online buzz, re-tweet pictures from

the show and watch the stars tweet from their seats at the ceremony, within a branded

environment.

GetGlue maintained a high profile on panels in SXSW this year. The service allows viewers to

„check-in‟ to TV shows. It now has 2 million users. Committed viewing is rewarded both

virtually and physically. The service has a chat function, thus creating niche communities

around vertical programs.

SXSW Alistair Lennie March 20, 2012

YouTube also talked about their steps to toward evolving content engagement. A majority of users

enter YouTube with an „unarticulated want‟. The „recommended viewing‟ column - using algorithmic

curation – was introduced to address this and now accounts for 60% of all site clicks. It outperforms

other sections such as „top rated‟ and „most viewed‟ by 200%.

Viral campaign success metrics need to evolve as a result. Beyond view counts, the measure of

successful content seeding will evolve to likes, comments and social sharing.

Social sports

Social media is being used more and more by sports companies.

Team USA (the US Olympic federation) is using social spaces to connect Americans to their Olympic

athletes leading to the Games. During the games there are restrictions on what athletes can say

(e.g., endorsements, commentating on rivals, etc.). However they can talk about their experiences

and show pictures.

Samsung‟s shared their „US Olympic Genome Project‟ as another example of connecting people to

their national athletes. It will allow deeper access to athletes for an extended amount of time. The

app will live within Facebook and will match athletes to you via degrees of separation – based

around interests, location, education, work.

Social media will also be used around the Olympic viewing experience. For the first time, YouTube

will livestream all the events and Google+ will facilitate huddles. GetGlue check-ins will encourage

conversation around niche sports.

Technical creativity is the next agency evolution

It was apparent from so many presentations and panels that tomorrow‟s creativity will be driven by

the clever, useful and functional use of technology rather than by the creative message itself.

Delivering the right message to the right person and the right time is more about working out how

to be useful, than how to be seen. The integration of technology solutions will be the way to engage

audiences.

Other interesting start-ups discussed @SXSW

• Grandstand is a web platform that transforms Foursquare, Facebook, Twitter and SMS

data/content into games, instant rewards and eye-popping visualizations.

• Zaarly is a proximity based, real-time buyer powered market. Buyers make an offer for an

immediate need and sellers cash in on an infinite marketplace for items and services they

never knew were for sale

• Group.Me is a group messaging service that lets you stay in touch with groups of people via

mobile phones and the Web. The service allows you to effortlessly group text with the

people in your life that are important to you. It‟s totally free and works on every phone.

• Pinterest‟s big idea is “helping people discover things that they didn‟t know they wanted”.

Social media buzz is around real-time updates – but Pinterest is about creating „timeless

SXSW Alistair Lennie March 20, 2012

beauty‟. As of January, they have 16.1 million U.S. “uniques”, essentially doubling in users

since November. Unlike Twitter, Pinterest did not grow via celebrities, but through networks

of people, e.g., design bloggers. Pinterest has become very successful with women and

homeowners.

• Path is a social networking-enabled photo sharing and messaging service for mobile

devices. Dave Morin, Co-founder and CEO, said: “our long-term grand vision here is to build

a network that is very high quality and that people feel comfortable contributing to at any

time.” Nike recently partnered with Path so Nike+ users can share their runs.

• Instagram – 27 million users. Of the active (weekly) users, 67% used Instagram yesterday.

They still only have a staff 13 workers - 4 of which are dedicated social community

managers. Currently limited to iOS users; however they announced that an Android version

was currently in private beta.

• Pandora – internet radio streaming tailored. Stations are created by song/artist choices and

songs selections are tailored via thumbs up/down interaction. US based only but with

international expansion plans in 2013. The future of Pandora is 1) Indie bands using its geo-

location capabilities to tailor tour destinations and 2) brands using their segmentation

capabilities to better nuance targeting and messaging.

Noteworthy events @SXSW

AMEX & Jay Z

• Free tickets given to those that synched their AmEx Card with their Twitter account.

• Songs were requested with the #jaysyncshow tag

• Entire show was livestreamed, and is available on Youtube & XBOX

Nike Fuel experiences

• Event space with Fuel based challenges - Bball, fball, & skate

• Physical Missions each day giving access to live music events that night

• Preferential access to Fuel band wearers

Homeless Hotspots

• Homeless Hotspots was a charitable innovation initiative by BBH New York.

• It attempted to modernize the Street Newspaper model employed to support homeless

populations by turning homeless people into 4G hotspots

• SXSW‟ers paid to get a password to gain access