Why There Won’t Be Another Twitter at SXSW

While I'm in Austin for South by Southwest Interactive, a frequent topic of discussion of what the hot app is this year. This is due largely to Twitter, which was founded in 2006 and then gained a rampant following of early adopters at SXSW in 2007.

That inspired this post in Ad Age on why 2007 was so unique for SXSW and Twitter:

Thanks to Twitter, digital media pundits spend all year making predictions about what technology will break through at the following SXSW. In this echo chamber, it&39;s a bigger deal than picking the winner of the Super Bowl, the Oscars, and the presidential election. It helped that Dennis Crowley debuted Foursquare at 2009&39;s festival, giving SXSW even more clout for launching tech brands. In 2011, GroupMe popularized group messaging, while rival app Beluga, garnering somewhat less buzz, was subsequently acquired by Facebook. The parlor game remains as vibrant as ever in 2012.

This year, there won&39;t be another Twitter. There will be technologies that attract some degree of fame, but Twitter was an anomaly. In 2007, it was fine for a technology as broad and undefined as Twitter to capture the imaginations of attendees. Now, there are four specific criteria that will determine what wins:

Read the full post at Ad Age for the criteria and the prediction for SXSWi 2012.