socialmedian: At SXSW, attendees confront Twitter saturation

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At SXSW, attendees confront Twitter saturation

Mar 14, 2009

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AUSTIN, Texas--By now, the story of how Twitter exploded onto the scene at the 2007 South by Southwest festival is legend in technology circles.

But here at SXSW 2009, the notion of the perfect match among community, service, and event seems flipped on its head. Many people are discovering that a monumental oversaturation of tweets is reversing the value that Twitter offered at SXSW 2007 and SXSW 2008 for finding friends and great parties.

At SXSW, the standard is for everyone to include the tag "#sxsw" in their tweets. For example, on Friday, I was looking for sources for a different story and tweeted, "If you are launching an iPhone app at #sxsw, or know someone who is, please let me know. Thanks!"

That's a great convention because it allows anyone wanting to know what's going on to search Twitter for posts using any search term important to them. That has proven useful for people wanting to find out what's going on after earthquakes, the Mumbai terrorist attacks, the Hudson River airplane crash, and many other events. At SXSW in 2007 and 2008, this was

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Comments (3)

Hutch,

Mar 14, 2009

"This year, however, because of the conference's impressive growth and Twitter's broader mainstream appeal, there are so many people sending tweets with the "#sxsw" tag that it has become almost impossible to find the same value as in the past. I did a search for the tag on Saturday afternoon and found that there had been 392 tweets with the term in just the previous ten minutes. That number mushroomed to more than 1,500 in the previous hour."

Callie O,

Mar 15, 2009

Twitter model: yes there are many marketers amassing followings. I am not sure how they are going to use this multiple demographic user base? Surely this ethos will render what was potentially the best social media immediate search and research app? If all the marketeers are doing is hashtaggin then maybe the new spam is the hashtag?

EAs will move to a more defined and niche adaptable service ( identi.ca?)