Before we get to all our SXSW activities there’s a few things you might not know about Mobile Roadie.

One short year ago we officially launched our company and initial product (”iPhone Apps for Bands”) at SXSW Music with the support of our launch partner, The Orchard.

We immediately gained traction within music and entertainment to support their expanding needs to promote and build brands, engage direct-to-fan, and make use of existing promotional content (Facebook, Twitter, video, ticket sales/tour info, news, merchandise, etc.)

Then a church called. And then an author. And soon restaurants, politicians, venues, athletes, magazines, conferences, bloggers, and more.

Some of the customers in the Mobile Roadie family now include:

• -Sony
• -Warner
• -KROQ
• -Warner
• -Universal
• -EMI
• -MIDEM
• -Taylor Swift
• -William Morris Endeavor (WmE2)
• -Golden Globes
• -Madonna
• -Random House
• -Ashton Kutcher
• -Dolly Parton
• -Levi’s
• -Live Nation
• -Fillmore
• -MASSIVEGOOD
• -The Doors

Not too shabby for the one year, right? And we haven’t even mentioned our partners yet.

To help make our CMS even more robust we integrated with leading providers in their respective industries:

• -Brightcove
• -Topspin Media
• -Artistdata
• -Ustream
• -Flurry

Mobile Roadie has also become a global brand with customers all over the world, which is why we offer support for 10 languages.  We’re also the only  company on the market to be able to serve both iPhone and Android needs, simultaneously, with no extra work or investment.

Michael attributes part of the rapid adoption to bringing democratization to the entire mobile space and giving control back to the brands. “Apps that were easy, affordable and quality we’re out of reach to those who wanted it. Now everyone can have high quality at low cost and you don’t have to choose between iPhone and Android.”

We’ve collected a lot of stories the past year through our stellar customers and can’t wait to share them at SXSW. You’ll have plenty of opportunities to hear them through the myriad of events we’re involved with.

How’s this for a SXSW SCHEDULE:

I’ll be getting in on Friday (@nicolejordan) so give me a shot (I’d meant to type “shout” but that works too) if you want to connect.  Brock (@brocksteady) and Michael (@msfd) get in Sunday the 14th for the first of our official events, TECH Cocktail where we’ll be demo’ing the Mobile Roadie platform and apps as one of the Microsoft Bizspark Accelerator finalists. Come on by and pick up a custom designed, vinyl-inspired shirts.

Monday the 15th you can catch us at Microsoft Bizspark Accelerator stage, where Michael will be presenting at 5:00pm in the social-business category. Later that evening we’re co-sponsoring events with TechKaraoke and Katalyst/Foursquare.

On Tuesday the 16th, to close out interactive and ease into music we’ve partnered up with two epic events: theMIX agency’s #theparty and (mt) official SXSW closing party.

If you’re hitting up music, join our team along with Topspin Media, All Access Today and PIAS on Thursday, March 18th at The Belmont from 7:00-10:00pm.

We’re also proud to announce that we’re the official app and co-sponsors for two must-attend showcases at SXSW Music: Levi’s Fader Fort and Ninjatune.

It’s going to be a packed schedule between the sessions, meetings, our events, and all the others we attend along the way. But we’ve got a lot to say and can’t wait to get started.  See you soon!

Doh! How could I forget this extremely important detail about our involvement at SXSW?  We are very proud sponsors of fellow Angelenos, and kindred start-up spirits, TechZulu.  They’ll be camped out at the Social Media Clubhouse most the time but if you’re lucky you might catch ‘em around the show or at any of our events!

There are no shortage of location-based services launching this week at SXSW in Austin, Texas. Many of them allow you to “check-in” places to let others know you are there. So how do you differentiate between then and decide which to use? Well, here’s one good way.

CauseWorld, is a free iPhone and Android app that lets you check-in places, but it has an added real-world bonus: big brands give money to charity when you do so. And this week at SXSW, CauseWorld is teaming up with TechCrunch to offer double point (which they aptly call “karma”) when you check in to one of over 50 venues around Austin (I’ll paste the full list at the bottom of the post), including the Austin Convention Center (where SXSW is held).

We’ve covered CauseWorld, which is the first offering from the soon-to-launch ShopKick, a few times now. It’s a great product because it takes an area that is red hot right now, location-based check-ins, and converts it into good deeds in the real world. For example, if you check-in at a store, you may earn 20 karma points. As you continue to accumulate these, you can turn them into real dollar donations for causes such as water in Sudan or trees in the Amazon. Brands such as Kraft Foods and Citi are currently giving the donations based on what users choose to trade their karma points for. The best part is, you don’t even have to buy anything — you simply check-in at various venues and earn the points. And again, this week at SXSW, checking-in with the app at a bunch of venues will earn you double karma points.

And like any good service with a gaming element, there’s a leaderboard to show who has donated the most karma points. And yes, checking-in can earn you badges, such as the TechCrunch one show in this post.

So if you’re going to be in Austin for SXSW this week. Or really, if you just want to do some good with your mobile device, check out CauseWorld. Find it in the App Store here, or in the Android Market (on your Android device).

Below find the 54 participating double karma Austin check-in spots:

1. Aces Lounge
2. Alamo Drafthouse
3. Amsterdam Café
4. Austin Convention Center
5. Austin Music Hall
6. B D Riley’s Irish Pub
7. Barbarella
8. Beso Cantina
9. Bob Bullock Theater
10. Buffalo Billiard
11. Café Mozart
12. Carver Museum and Cultural Center
13. Cedar Door
14. Chupacabra Cantina
15. Chuy’s
16. Clay Pit
17. Club Deville
18. Cuba Libre
19. Dirty Dog Bar
20. Elysium
21. Emo’s
22. Emo’s Annex
23. Flamingo Cantina
24. Hyde Park Bar & Grill
25. Iron Cactus
26. Karma Lounge
27. Kenichi
28. Kerbey Lane
29. La Zona Rosa
30. Lambert’s Downtown
31. Lustre Pearl, Lustre Pearl Bar
32. Malaga, Malaga Tapas & Bar
33. Malverde
34. Mellow Johnny’s
35. Molotov Lounge
36. Moonshine Bar and Grill
37. Opal Divines
38. Palm Door
39. Red 7
40. Red Eye Fly
41. Rudy’s Country Store and BBQ
42. Rusty Spurs
43. Salt Lick BBQ
44. Spider House Café
45. Stubb’s BBQ
46. Stubbs
47. The Belmont
48. The Best Wurst I
49. The Highball
50. The Scoot Inn
51. Uncorked Tasting Room
52. Velveeta Room
53. Victory Grill
54. Vortex Repertory

First, we'd like to thank all 596 survey respondents and the many Open Thread commenters who gave such interesting and valuable feedback in our recent post "Should Social Media Experts Be Required to Know Their Tech?"

Over the past couple days, we've been able to put together a decent picture and identify some knowledge gaps and points of confusion for many would-be social media experts. But first, let's address why some of the RWW staff - and many of our readers, some of whom must hire social media experts - feel it's important for even the most marketing-oriented of consultants to have a rudimentary understanding of the workings of the Web, including its ecosystem of companies and applications.

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Konqueror is a popular browser among Linux users. The browser Mozilla hasn't been supported since 2006, having been replaced by Firefox and, to a lesser extent SeaMonkey, both products of the Mozilla Foundation.

The Web does a lot more and a lot less than the average bear would think.

For the most part, we humans have a hard time admitting that we're "average bears," though. Before you earn the moniker of "guru" or "expert" or even "professional/consultant," you need to be far above average in your knowledge of the Web, not just how to get a few thousand Twitter followers or how to increase sales by X percent through Facebook promotions. Those things can come down to common sense or secondhand advice from true pioneers in social media.

Generally speaking, a social media expert will have been around the block long enough to know a CMS from a CPU, to know a bit about servers and DDoS attacks, to know what kinds of operating systems and browsers and even hardware the tech elite prefer to use (or debate over). And the good ones will remain humble enough to keep learning and will always admit there's more to know. Some of the wisest social media advisors I've know will ask to not be called experts, in fact, for how can any one person truly be an expert on something as vast as the Internet?

Flip Side of the Coin: Imagine someone telling you he was a broadcast media expert. That includes television - national, local, cable, satellite, you name it - and all kinds of AM/FM and satellite radio. It might also include pre-show advertisements in movie theaters. That also includes media spend, account management and metrics for all kinds of ads, from branding to direct response. Essentially, the person is claiming to be a one-man ad agency - an impossible claim at best and a fraudulent one at worst.

How to Fill the Knowledge Gap: Start listening to people who disagree with you. Search the farthest corners of the Web for new people and new ideas. Stop hanging out in echo chambers and start telling yourself every day, "I know that I know nothing." That phrase seems to have done Socrates some good; chances are it could help you, too.

Haskell is a rare and complicated programming language. .NET sounds more familiar, but it's a framework, not a language.

In almost every social media project that doesn't involve something as simple as setting up a Twitter account, you'll have to work with and rely on the expertise of developers.

You might not want to learn a programming language yourself - it can take a lot of time, which is a precious commodity. But if you don't know the basics of what programming languages can and cannot do, as well as what languages your developer colleagues use, you'll end up frustrated and inefficient. And the aforementioned developer colleagues might feel disrespected as well; being asked to deliver fantastical products or results from someone with no understanding of your work isn't a fun experience.

Flip Side of the Coin: Imagine a CTO telling you, an interactive marketer, to run a direct mail campaign and get 500,000 new registrations. It could be done, perhaps, but it's not efficient or a good way to use your skills. Even if he told you he wanted 500,000 new signups, is that a realistic goal? Is it based on current adoption trends? Does this guy have any idea what he's asking for?

How to Fill the Knowledge Gap: Read up on the basics of programming languages; spend a few hours here and there on Wikipedia and O'Reilly books. Then, ask questions of developers you trust. Don't be afraid to "sounds dumb" or be inquisitive.

It may seem to be the ad-free fluffy bunny of the social networking world, but Twitter turned a profit through search deals in 2009.

On occasion, we social media folks make intuitive choices that turn out to be dead wrong. While there's a lot to be said for making bold choices for your users and clients, there's much more value in making solid choices based on observed trends, analyzed data and tested outcomes. In fact, it's plain irresponsible to make recommendations to clients based on feelings rather than facts.

Always challenge yourself to make sure your opinions and advice line up with facts, not the other way around. As a wise man once wrote, "You don't use science to prove that you're right, you use science to become right."

Flip Side of the Coin: Rather than looking at marketing budgets or user traffic, your CEO tells you to spend $1 million on an AdWords campaign because "Google and advertising are where's the money's at online, right?" It seems like a ridiculous gamble with no logical reason or rhyme.

How to Fill the Knowledge Gap: Test everything you might suggest. Test it over a reasonable period of time, making sure to take peak times into account, and get a reasonable data sample. Learn about A/B and multivariate testing, website analytics, SEO and all the dirty details of traffic and user responses. Most of all, never, ever assume.

Friends and family (and fools) will always be the first to invest in any startup.

Especially if you're communicating with or about startups, you need to understand a little bit about venture capital, if for no other reason than to understand an app or company's place in the market. VCs can sometimes be good barometers of a startup's health or the likelyhood of future success.

Likewise, with regard to our survey question about profitable social media apps and companies, knowing about various stages of development can help you know when to suggest key partnerships. Collaboration between two entities can give a boost to both.

As a strategist, a consultant or any kind of expert, you need to be able to spot a sure bet just as quickly as a sinking ship. And in the startup-filled world of social media, few are better at this all-important task than those with an understanding of tech investment.

Flip Side of the Coin: Your CEO informs you that the company is about to start a marketing campaign on a website that, through your social and industry connections, you know is about to go out of business. In fact, every website of its kind if flailing; you're surprised he wasn't aware of the situation.

How to Fill the Knowledge Gap: Read ReadWriteStart, of course! We recommend (and frequently interview and comment on) various brilliant VCs, angels and experienced entrepreneurs on this channel.

We hope you've found this information entertaining and informative. The remaining questions on the poll were, by and large, answered correctly. There still seems to be some confusion on the definition of the word "hacker," but I'm convinced that one will simply take more soapboxing on my part.

What words of advice do you have to share with your less technical colleagues in social media? How can we all improve our game online while making the Internet a better, smarter place? Let us know in the comments.

Apple fanatics will be able to place their iPad orders at 5:30 AM Pacific time (8:30 Eastern) tomorrow, Friday, March 12th. The pre-orders will be available through Apple.com, and are expected to ship in the United States next month — April 3rd to be precise.

The Unofficial Apple Weblog learned about the pre-order time after it asked Apple for the information in an e-mail.

Let’s assume you’re the sort of person who wants an iPad; if so, you can still wait for the launch date and pick up an iPad at your local Apple store (or at Best Buy a little bit after launch). However, there’s a possibility that it will sell out and you’ll be left hanging. If this scenario worries you, you’ll want to place your order online to be sure you get one before your friends and colleagues. You know, if you’re into that kind of one-upmanship.

But if you’re the sort of person who thinks the device is more hype than substance, you can go ahead and sleep in tomorrow.

Are you going to be up bright and early for the iPad pre-order? Let us know in the comments.

Tags: apple, Apple Tablet, ipad

If you’re a gamer, you might have heard about yesterday’s news about the PlayStation Move, Sony’s answer to the Wii Remote and Microsoft’s upcoming Project Natal motion controller. In a demonstration yesterday, the company showed off the device, which utilizes remote-like controllers and the PlayStation Eye camera to capture your movements and turn them into actions on the screen.

We’ve seen plenty of screenshots and heard a lot about the controller’s capabilities, but we wanted to find out for ourselves whether it really could make the PlayStation more competitive with its counterparts. That’s why I decided to take the system for a test drive here at the Game Developer’s Conference (GDC) in San Francisco, California.

Did it live up to expectations? Could it challenge Nintendo and Microsoft in gaming? I’ve got some thoughts on the matter:

First, a little bit about the PlayStation Move: it is a two-part control system. First are the handheld controllers, which act essentially as Wiimotes. The main controller comes with a lighted color ball on the top though — this is an essential component for the second part of the Move: the PlayStation Eye camera, which tracks your movements on screen. Combined, you get a controller system.

When I held the remote-like device in my hands and actually got to play with it, I immediately became aware of two things: its accuracy and its augmented reality features. It feels just a little more precise than a Wiimote with the MotionPlus controller. Because it uses the camera rather than the senor bar that the Wii utilizes, it can more accurately catch your motions. It also translates them onto the screen with your face on the TV.

I was impressed with the augmented reality aspect of the PlayStation Move more, though. The lighted ball on my controller turned first into a paintbrush, and then a fly swatter. It didn’t have the lag that a lot of other systems deal with, which made the experience enjoyable.

Is it that much better than the Wii, though? To be honest, I think the answer to that question depends on how developers use the PlayStation Eye camera to enhance their games. If they focus on the controllers, then it’s just a fancy Wiimote. If it focuses on bringing you into the game via the camera, then there are some real possibilities.

In the end though, Microsoft’s Project Natal is still going to garner the attention and the hype, as it is a bolder step into motion control. Sony essentially played it safe with the Move, while Microsoft’s implementing an all-or-nothing strategy with Natal.

Here is me in action with the PlayStation Move:

Tags: games, gaming, microsoft, Natal, Nintendo, playstation, playstation move, project natal, sony, video games, Wii, xbox

I had an amazing day at the Dachis Social Business Summit. I have so much to write about it might take me a few weeks to catch up. Especially after surprise guest John Hagel presented. That was the most insightful 15 minutes I’ve heard in a long time.

I’ve been thinking about out loud on this blog is what the future of the marketing org will look like inside companies.This has lead me to wonder about the total reconstruction of corporate organization. I’ve researched a lot of different models but there is one area I never looked to: The Middle Ages.

Douglas Rushkoff, who I wasn’t familiar with but if I was a normal PR/Marketing person I probably would have been, as he is an award winning writer, documentary film maker, media critic and accomplished author. He recently published a new book called Life Inc.: How the World Became a Corporation and How to Take It Back (Amazon Link) which we got for free at the summit (see disclosures at the bottom of the post for full FTC disclosure).

Doug, Dachis’ own Lee Bryant and several others referenced the pre-twentieth century corporate driven economies of Western Europe. While this may sound like heresy to many of us American capitalists their point was that we are moving back to a relationship driven economy.  One common theme was that we have entered a time where relationships matter. The network is no longer roads or servers, the network is us and we are people who connect with people.

Our current business climate is functions the way it does because in order to achieve scale we have to give up intimacy. The twentieth century belief was that you couldn’t have both. The Internet, in theory gave us both scale and intimacy but social media has fully delivered on that promise.

What was surprisingly absent from the summit was talk of technology. There was some, but just used mostly as examples not recommendations or even suggestions. The general agreement was that our current technology will look nothing like our future technology, but more important than that was that the technology, while enabling, doesn’t matter. Our current processes, value propositions and especially the way we communicate is about to devolve back to the Middle Ages.

Join the New Comm Biz Facebook Page or follow the Twitter account.

Photo credit via kennymatic

FTC Disclosure Icons via Louis Gray

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​ It's T minus 19 hours until the annual liquid re-union that is SXSW. While the more massive crowds show up for the music festival on the 17th, SXSW is also home to the world's biggest tech-fes...

Reporters Without Borders released its annual report [PDF] on online access today. They call it Enemies of the Internet, and it shows a world where online censorship, intimidation and worse is increasing.

It's not surprising that as access to the Internet expands, more and more dictators and tyrants will try to suppress it. But what's troubling about this year's report is the inclusion of two democratic countries: Australia and South Korea.

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Both countries were included in the report's Under Surveillance list - a sub group of the main Enemies list.

Australia's proposed online filtering system is something RWB says it has "never before seen in a democracy." Additionally, in the state of South Australia it's now against the law to be anonymous online if it's in the context of an election.

In South Korea, a new censorship law allows for five-year prison sentences for anyone found using the Internet "to disseminate false news intended to damage the public interest." The same law requires online visitors to register their real name and national ID card number when visiting sites with more than 100,000 members.

Here are a handful of the worst violators of online freedom of expression on the Enemies of the Internet list:

Burma

Two high-ranking government officials have been sentenced to death for having e-mailed documents abroad. Net censorship is a serious matter in Burma. Massive filtering of websites and extensive slowdowns during times of unrest are daily occurrences for the country's Internet users. The legislation governing Internet use - the Electronic Act - is one of the most liberticidal laws in the world.

China

As its polemic with Google and the United States on the Internet's future unfolds, China continues to intensify Web censorship, faced with an increasingly forceful online community.The much-vaunted promises made by organizers at the open ceremonies of the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games have proven to be mere illusions for the world's biggest netizen prison. Expanded dissemination of propaganda, generalized surveillance and crackdowns on Charter 08 signatories are commonplace on what has become the Chinese Intranet - with significant consequences for trade.

Egypt

More than a mere virtual communications tool, the Egyptian Internet has become a mobilization and dissension platform. Although website blocking remains limited, authorities are striving to regain control over bloggers who are more and more organized, despite all the harassment and arrests.

Iran

Iran, one of cyber-censorship's record-holding countries, has stepped up its crackdown and online surveillance since the protests over the disputed presidential reelection of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on June 12, 2009. The regime is demonizing the new media, which it is accusing of serving foreign interest.While a dozen netizens are serving out their terms in Evin Prison, bold Internet users are continuing to mobilize.

Saudi Arabia

An emerging bloggers' community is up against harsh censorship. These bloggers are confronting the traditional forces of Saudi society, which are attempting to prevent the Internet from becoming a forum for free discussions. Saudi Arabia is one of the first countries to have been authorized to write Internet domain names in Arabic.The Internet penetration rate, currently estimated at about 38% of the population, is rising. How- ever, it is still one of the most repressive countries with regard to the Internet.

Syria is reinforcing its censorship of troublesome topics on the Web and tracking netizens who dare to express themselves freely on it. As a result, social networks have been particularly targeted by omnipresent surveillance. The promised technological improvements are slow to materialize. The authorities' distrust of the potential for dissident online mobilization may be playing a role in this delay.

The progress made by Vietnam in the domain of human rights, which allowed the country to become a member of the World Trade Organization in 2007, is nothing but a distant memory. As the 2011 Communist Party Congress draws nearer, the regime is muffling dissident views on the Internet, and its first target is critics of the country's policy toward China.

Back in November of last year, the location-based social event service Hot Potato launched at our Realtime CrunchUp. Today, they’ve taken what was a solid service, and made it a lot better with a number of upgrades.

First and foremost, there is a new iPhone application that just went live in the App Store. With a completely revamped user interface, the app makes it easier than ever to find and participate in events. Perhaps more importantly, it makes it really easy to create new events — and notably, the service has the nicest third-party Foursquare integration I’ve ever seen. When you click on the button to create an event, you can still manually enter a location, but if you happen to be around the venue, you can simply pick it from Foursquare’s list of venues with the click of a button. This drastically simplifies the event creation process since the venue metadata is already there.

This new app will be crucial for the SXSW festival in Austin, Texas, which starts tomorrow. If you’ve been reading TechCrunch over the past week, you’ve undoubtedly seen that just about every location-based service has an app they’re unveiling. And another service based around planning events, Plancast, just launched their app this evening. But Hot Potato offers the best of both worlds as it allows you to both plan future events, and interact with ones currently taking place. The new app makes it very easy to chat about the event, and upload photos and videos.

And they’ve cleaned up the stream of information around these events. There is now a filter to show everyone commenting, or just your friends. There are also now number indicators to show unread items. And the check-in process has been simplified thanks to big green buttons that make it obvious.

Also new for SXSW is Twitter integration. On a case-by-case basis, Hot Potato will be pulling in tweets about certain events at SXSW, using a filter to make sure only relevant ones show up. You’ll be able to do things such as filter those tweets to show only those by people you actually follow, which will make them potentially much more meaningful to you. You can also reply to tweets thanks to integration of Twitter’s API. And you can share tweets from within the app that will show up as retweets on Twitter.

Another new features is Calendars — something which each Hot Potato user now has. Obviously, you can add the events you wish to be a part of to your calendar, but people you are friends with on the service can also add you to other events as well. The app also now features Push Notifications now (on top of revamped email notifications).

On top of the new app, Hot Potato has rolled out a completely revamped website with just about all of the same functionality of the new app (as well as the new look and feel). And at the highest level, Hot Potato finally has its own social graph, which can pull in friends from the usual suspects: Facebook, Twitter, your address book, etc.

And here’s something that should really help Hot Potato this week: each time someone checks-in to a SXSW event with Foursquare, that service will recommend they also join the event on Hot Potato. Clicking on the accompanying link provided in the Foursquare app with open the Hot Potato app and let them join the event with a click (if they have an account). As you might expect, you can also check-in to a venue on Foursquare within Hot Potato. With Foursquare likely to be one of the key apps used by conference goers, this cross promotion is simply huge.

On top of all of this, the service now has its own full API, so others can use and interact with their data.

Simply put, all these updates are full of win, and make a good app even better. And remarkably, they’ve managed to cram in all these new features while at the same time simplifying the overall experience.

Fine the new iPhone app here in the App Store. It’s a free download.

@Stroke9, @MilesTheDJ, @WhiteMenace all in the house at @LIVE105 Wednesday afternoon!

Hear them talk about Twitter, Tap Tap Revenge, and TwestivalSF!

Rockin it hard core!  Watch the video, and join us on March 25, 2010 at 6 p.m. to see them play LIVE!!!!

Wander over to Amiando and get your tickets now! 100% of the proceeds go to @Concern Worldwide

Follow the band members @lukester and @mcdermy to find out what they are up to these days.

The official Foursquare account just sent out a tweet letting everyone know that today is already the service’s biggest day ever. This is interesting since it’s actually the day before the SXSW conference kicks off in Austin, Texas.

According to the tweet, Foursquare broke 275,000 check-ins (the previous record, set last Friday) for the day “hours ago.” This means they’re very likely well past 300,000 now and perhaps even higher. To put that in some perspective, just a month ago, Foursquare set a record with 1.2 million check-ins for the entire week. And that was double was it was the month prior. At today’s rate, Foursquare would be doing well over 2 million check-ins a week.

Today happens to be the first birthday of Foursquare, so they shared some numbers earlier. The service now has over 500,000 users, they’ve given out over 1 million badges, there are over 1.4 million venues in the system, with over 1,200 specials available. And in total, there have been some 15.5 million check-ins. But that was before today’s record numbers.

While there are well over a dozen location-based services launching something at SXSW, the main two competitors vying for users’ time are expected to be Foursquare and Austin-native Gowalla. For its part, Gowalla noted that it was “Amazing to watch the Gowalla action on the eve of SXSW. AMAAAAAAZING!,” earlier today. Both recently revamped their websites, and both yesterday launched their new iPhone apps. And judging from the Vicarious.ly data provided by SimpleGeo, both are absolutely on fire right now and could go nuclear this weekend.

Update: Gowalla has a range of just about every possible venue you can imagine for SXSW and so far (again, the day before the conference), they’ve seen 352 check-ins at the SXSW Badge Pick-Up alone.

On November 19th, 2006, Nintendo launched its fifth home console to the world. The Nintendo Wii was both ridiculed and praised for its unique controller system — the Wiimote — which detects movements in three dimensions.

Three and a half years later, the Wii has dominated the market, shattered sales records, and put its two main rivals, Microsoft and Sony, on the defensive. Both companies are responding with motion-based controllers of their own though.

Microsoft has generated some big buzz with the revelation of Project Natal, a new camera-based system that requires no controller, just the movement of your body to function. And yesterday, Sony officially announced PlayStation Move, a controller setup that utilizes a camera and a remote-like controller to interact with the screen.

Here’s the question we have for all of you gamers: which next-generation controller system excites you more: Microsoft’s Natal or Sony’s Move?

Our poll for this week’s web faceoff ends on Sunday, March 14th at 12:00 PM PT. Let us know your choice, and don’t forget to leave your opinion in the comments!

Tags: microsoft, Natal, Nintendo, playstation, playstation move, project natal, sony, Wii, wiimote

If you’re not able to make it to SxSW in Austin TX this year, don’t fret. The Social Media Clubhouse is bringing the conference to your computer screen with a full slate of live programming and events. Here are the highlights, along with the complete calendar. You can tune in daily on our livestream page for all of these events.

• Saturday March 13 at 3pm CST: The Synaptic Web Summit sponsored by Intel
• On Sunday March 14, 2010 at 3pm CST join us for Maximum Engagement! Understanding the Social Media Multiplier hosted by Awareness Inc
• On Monday March 15, 2010 at 1pm CST we will convene The CoWorking Summit sponsored by Moonfruit.
• Then every day at 6pm will be the SxSW Daily Recap Show hosted with TechZulu.
• If that wasn’t enough, we will also be broadcasting a musical showcase with KUT Live featuring Hilary York on Saturday at 5pm CST; Loose Leaves on Sunday at 5pm CST,  The Ashes on Monday at 3pm CST and Kole Christensen on Tuesday at 5pm CST.

Share the Stream

We are encouraging all our Social Media Club chapters around the world and supporters to share the stream! Please use the embed code below to place on your local Social Media Club Chapter site or your blog. You can also freely pick up our RSS feed and share the posts there as long as you maintain the Creative Commons Non Commercial Share and Share Alike license.

What do you do when you first fire up your browser? Most probably, you log into various sites that require a username and password – Facebook, Gmail, Twitter and the like. For me, personally, it’s quite a chore, as I need to log into over 10 different services before I start doing anything.

Now, Mozilla sets out to alleviate this issue with a new Firefox plugin called Account Manager. It currently doesn’t do much; it recognized that you’ve signed in into a website and displays an icon that says that yes, you’re indeed signed up under that username. However, Mozilla has ambitious plans for online identity management from within a browser. From their blog post:

“Your Web browser, as your most trusted relationship in your life online, has nearly perfect knowledge of everything you do on the Web. We envision a world where your browser will play an even more active and critical role in helping you control and shape your online experience. To realize this vision, we need to increase the browser’s understanding of your online identity and provide a platform for building new capabilities that securely take advantage of this rich, dynamic set of data that represents the digital “you.””

The account manager is available as an early, experimental alpha version, and it works only with Yahoo!, Facebook and Google, as well as some of Mozilla’s sites that require login, such as Bugzilla. Hopefully, in the future we’ll see features that really make switching between different user accounts and sharing content on various social networks easier and more streamlined.

Tags: account manager, facebook, Firefox, Google, mozilla

iPad orders start at 8:30AM tomorrow morning originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 11 Mar 2010 20:31:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

It's not enough to just be working with Social Media for most brands, they're also looking to build community... but then what?

It's a fair question. The net result for many of the bigger brands is a thought that somehow links a vibrant community to loyalty and spending (hopefully beyond reason). If that is, indeed, the reason that many brands are interested in Social Media Marketing and in building an online community, then what happens after all of this works out? What if you have as many people as possible either following you on Twitter or friending you on Facebook?

What happens next?

For many, the fear is that they will cannibalize the relationship by eventually giving in to their past addictions as they begin spamming the network with promotional offers, discounts and other very traditional mass media marketing tactics. They just wont be able to help themselves. The keepers of the community and the conversation (be it the Marketing, Communications, Public Relations or Business Development departments) need to have some kind of serious game plan. They have to be thinking not only about how they're going to find their next followers and engaged community members, but the direction and conversation that is evolving and how it might, ultimately, end. 

All good things must come to an end.

Something else will come along. The tools, channels and platforms will both evolve and dissolve. Nobody likes to talk about it (and it might sound a little sombre and sobering), but it's true. There will come a point where everyone (companies, brands, individuals) is publishing content, rating content, and pushing information out there in text, images, audio and video to the point that it won't be noise, but rather something much busier and messier than noise. Even the best of the aggregators and editors (both humans and technology-powered options) won't help. At the best filtered moment in time, it will still be like trying to drink from a fire hose.

It's not that big of a deal.

Human beings are amazingly resilient and adaptable. As hard as change is, we manage to grapple through it, innovate and deliver some pretty spectacular things. So now, the time has come to start thinking about innovation in Social Media, to start thinking about what happens after we build a loyal (and valuable) community. What does it look like? What's the point of it? How does it meet our business objectives? And - more importantly - how do we keep this community engaged, enthused and excited about being a community?

Sorry, no answers. 

This concept is still fresh. It's something we should all grapple with (I am). If we don't start asking these questions, experimenting with the platforms and channels and pushing out our thoughts about where this is all going, then all we'll ever do is rest on our laurels.

Where is all of this going? What do you think?

Tags: aggregation brand business development business objectives communications community content conversation editing editor experimentation facebook filtering information innovation loyalty marketing marketing tactic mass media online community public relations publishing social media social media innovation social media marketing twitter

Location based social networks - are you over it already? It feels like location is all we ever hear about anymore, especially this week leading up to SXSW.

We're excited about location too; see our enthusiastic write-ups What Twitter's Geolocation API Makes Possible and The Era of Location as Platform Has Arrived. But it's getting a little ridiculous. We offer below a few thoughts to consider about all this location madness.

Sponsor

1. That Phrase: "Location, Location, Location"

   You're going to hear journalists use it far too much. Want to know where it came from? Language sleuth William Safire investigated for the NYT last year and concluded that the phrase was probably first used in a 1926 real estate classified ad in the Chicago Tribune: "Attention salesmen, sales managers: location, location, location, close to Rogers Park." Don't you feel more savvy now?

2. Too Many Startups?

   We're under embargo on almost all of them, but we can tell you there are at least 25 companies making location-related announcements at SXSW this week. Probably more. The Dunbar number of startups in a particular market, if you will, is something like 5. More than that and most people stop taking new entrants seriously. It's one thing to offer different technologies along the value chain of location, but sharing your location and aggregating messages by things like hashtag are two very crowded niches right now. One of my favorites is SitBy.Us, an app that lets you see where your Twitter friends are sitting in a conference session. That's pretty cool.

   You've got to wonder if and when Location will Jump the Shark and what consumer exhaustion for it might mean for the long-term prospects of the market. Everyone wants to be "the Twitter of SXSW 2010" but the fact is that SXSW represented a statistically insignificant increase in Twitter usage, historically speaking.

3. Location Startups "Not Playing Nice"

   There are loads of ways to post your location but it's very hard to get a feel for who exactly is where. SimpleGeo launched a site called Vicarious.ly today that aggregates check-ins across scads of services, all around Austin. It doesn't work very well, though. SimpleGeo's Matt Galligan told us today that the site is really just a proof of concept and that our perception that these startups aren't playing very nice together is very true. "And it's a real shame," he told us. It's hard for a 3rd party service to clearly identify whether these competing services are really talking about the same location, for example. No one tells their users what users on competing services are up to in the same location. Gowalla's Josh Williams says he doesn't know what the problem is and that Gowalla is very open about user data by open standards.

   Update: Galligan pinged us after publication to clarify: "I mostly meant the problem with venue data was because of how awful the *business listings* market is. There's certainly issues with non-connecting venue data but it's a *very* hard problem to solve, so I don't blame them right now. It can, however, be solved in the future."

4. We Need Cross-Service Venue Tracking

   If you're thinking of going to a place, or you're there and wonder who else is, what you need is a place where you can see who has checked in there across all services. For the place to be at the center of your experience, not the service. Michael Arrington says the new AOL Lifestream lets you track particular locations, but that service only supports Foursquare among location services. What we need is something like that across any and every check-in service. That's the kind of thing that data standards can enable.

   Google's Chris Messina told us that the Activity Streams standard has a namespace for "place" and would probably add support for GeoRSS soon, but that so far Google Buzz is the only location service that seems to be supporting it.

5. Gowalla Doesn't Get Enough Love

   Gowalla's API is read-only, meaning that 3rd party apps can't publish check-ins to the service like they can to Foursquare. Gowalla says they are working on it, but they are the underdog already and this isn't helping. AOL's cool new Lifestream product, for example, only supports Foursquare, not Gowalla. That's a real shame. You know what's nice about Gowalla, though? You can see who has checked into a place and when, even if they aren't friends of yours. That's not something that's easy to do with Foursquare at all. It's also much prettier than Foursquare and uses peoples' full names, instead of grade-school-style first names and last initials. Gowalla's API just isn't seeing the adoption that Foursquares is, though. Have you seen Avoidr.org for example? That's pretty funny stuff and it's built on top of Foursquare.
   

   The above is for illustration purposes only. I like both these guys just fine.

6. Imagine the Future, It's Going to Be Different

   If location based services ever become popular with the mainstream, every urban area might end up looking like the Foursquare map of downtown Austin this weekend. That means services are going to have to come up with creative and interesting new ways to make that data usable day-to-day and not overwhelming.

   Likewise, when you think about the future, imagine Facebook being a player in this market, because they are going to be soon. It's possible that Facebook and Twitter could be where all these other services meet-up. Brightkite has different features than BlockChalk but we can see what our friends are doing across any of these apps on Facebook, perhaps. And Facebook is where your mom checks-in, if she's not an early adopter.

   Finally, will location tracking be persistent? Loopt right now uses mobile carrier tie-ins to track your location constantly and expose it to a circle of trusted friends. Is that something that all services will enable in the future? Gowalla CEO Josh Williams told us "no way" does he think that will be the dominant model, but Adam Duvander, author of the forthcoming book Mapscripting 101, says he agrees with Loopt: that the value in persistent location tracking will be so compelling that everyone will end up going for it in the end, once proper privacy settings are figured out.

   What do you think, do you think persistent location tracking is the future of location based services?

   These are some of the things I'm thinking about location this week.

   Discuss

   
   

   
   

Aol launched Lifestream, a social aggregator and publisher, as part of their AIM platform at TechCrunch50 Last Fall. Since then it has gained nearly 2 million users, say Aol. Based on that success Aol is now launching Lifestream as a standalone product at lifestream.aol.com.

Like Friendfeed, Lifestream aggregates a number of third party social networks – Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, Foursquare, Delicious, Digg, Flickr, YouTube, etc., so if you follow a Lifestream user you’ll see all of the content that user publishes on those networks, and Lifestream automatically pulls in content from people you already follow on those various social networks, so you don’t have to create yet another new friend list. Lifestream isn’t yet integrated with Google Buzz, but Aol says it may be coming soon.

Users can filter out content from specific networks if they like, on a per user or broad basis. A way to think about this – “noise cancellation for social networks.”

Lifestream also lets users publish back to social networks. Status updates posted to Lifestream can be posted back to Facebook, Myspace and/or Twitter. Lifestream also optionally notes your location in your status updates via GPS on mobile devices, or you can manually add it instead.

That’s not it though. Users can sign in to Lifestream using their Facebook account via Facebook Connect, making it unnecessary to remember separate account and credentials for the site.

You also have a variety of choices in how you use Lifestream. You can access it via the website, an AIR application, or via iPhone and Android applications. As I said above, the mobile applications are particularly useful because they auto-note your location for easy check-ins, and you can post pictures you take from the phone.

That mobile version of the product is what excites me most. You can see where your friends are checking into on, say, Foursquare, click through to a place page and then go there yourself and check in. And Lifestream allows you to follow places just like people, so you can see whenever someone checks in to your local cafe or bar. That ability to follow places is probably the single best reason to use Lifestream.

The Lifestream product is simple, intuitive and really, really useful. Frankly it’s what Google Buzz should have been – both an independent social network on its own, but very deep integration into all of the other social networks you are likely to use daily. It’s nice to see actual innovation coming out of Aol.

Today Lunch.com announced its biggest product expansion to date, Communities; a platform that gives people the ability to create their own personal review websites on the Lunch.com site. For their launch they put together a SXSW Community where you can “Rate and Review SXSW Panels and Parties”. Perfect timing! So how does it work.

Each Community has what is called a “Founder” which is the person who started the community and is the one who manages it. They get to curate the content that members add, format the templates used for reviews, pick the top three reviews to highlight at the top of the page, and manage the Twitter account for the community. They essentially guide the conversation and topics.

The page is composed of reviews, featured lists, micro reviews and three featured reviews that usually revolve around a popular topic in the community. You have the ability to search members, see the top contributors and check out recent activity.

The SXSW Community is managed by Thomas Knoll and already has 56 members. With all the over sharing that takes place these days it’s pretty amazing that they were able to keep it quiet. Here are a few members which you might recognize:

• Chrisheuer
• Corvida
• Sarahcooley
• AlanaJoy
• Jyamasaki
• Missrogue
• Scobleizer

They have already added a ton of content and one particular tag that most if not all of the SXSWi attendees will want to check out. A list of all the parties.

When you click on the link of each event it takes you to a page that has a wiki with info on what the event is, where it’s located, the time it starts and photos. You then have the opportunity to write a detailed review or micro one, that will post to the page and can be sent to Twitter and Facebook. Check out some of the top parties ahead of time, the community has thoughtfully added tips for you SXSW newbies.

Needless to say there is some work involved with being a Community Founder, which is why you would want to pick something you’re passionate about if you’re going to sign up to be one.

If you want to become a part of the SXSW community and add your 2 cents about it, sign up to be a member of Lunch.com here. Then visit the community page to become a member. You can also follow them on Twitter at @LunchSXSW.

If you just want to browse the community before signing up for an account, we have a special beta code for you. Click here and enter the code “lalawag”.

Follow Lunch on Twitter @Lunch_com to stay up to date on news, and become a fan on Facebook.

In order to maintain the integrity of the Lunch community, people interested in creating a community will be asked to fill out a brief application form. This benefits fellow founders and members overall, by ensuring they’re surrounded by people who share Lunch’s brand values and vision for high quality content and responsible participation. Once you have created an account and signed in, enter the private BETA code CURIOUS as your passcode to access the application.

Lunch.com is a social media website where people share and discover genuinely useful information, connecting to others with common interests while uncovering common ground with those who may appear to be their total opposites. Fueled by curiosity, Lunch features reviews, lists and ratings created by members of the community, on almost any imaginable topic. Launched in April 2009 by J.R. Johnson former founder and CEO of VirtualTourist.com, which was acquired by Expedia in July 2008), Lunch’s proprietary Similarity Network engine calculates commonalities in taste and opinions among the site’s members.

While Facebook already provides a page insights tool for Page administrators to track traffic to their page, there is still a lot of information which is unknown. So how can administrators determine how well their landing tab is performing? There are a number of techniques to monitor your Facebook Page traffic, four of which are described in this article.

Last week, Webtrends announced the release of an analytics packages that helps users track activity on their Facebook Page. The tool, found here, enables developers to track interactions on their custom tabs. Unfortunately, Facebook does not enabled third-party services to track any interactions on the main Facebook Page. Today, Webtrends also announced the expansion of their Facebook product in order to monitor Flash applications within Pages or as stand alone applications.

As I previously stated, Facebook limits what information third-party developers can monitor. That’s why the company’s Insights product continues to serve as an important tool for all Page administrators. We previously wrote about the most important things to monitor within your Facebook page insights. Ultimately, you can track demographic data, interactions by media type, and more, all of which are only accessible through the Facebook Insights product.

Core Metrics, one of the larger enterprise analytics services, recently announced the launch of new services integrated into many of their existing products that enable marketers to measure their ROI from Facebook. The aim of the Facebook integration is to determine “the role Facebook plays in influencing subsequent website visits, behaviors, and conversions.”

Essentially, Facebook clicks are tracked and then can be connected to actual on-site business objectives, such as new subscriptions and sales conversions. This appears to be a more robust solution than many of the other products, but it may be data overload for the average Facebook Page administrator.
Core Metrics -

While Google analytics is targeted at website owners, the analytics service can be used by Facebook Page administrators as well. Unfortunately Facebook has not enabled their FBML tag within Facebook Pages, so a London-based web development company decided to create their own solution. By using images, there is a workaround which enables Page administrators to track everything within the custom tabs.