SXSW: Not Much to Twitter About

Plenty has been said about my interview with Mark Zuckerberg. Maybe that's because there wasn't much else at the conference to talk about

by Sarah Lacy

I'm just back from four days in sunny Austin, Tex., where I attended the South by Southwest Interactive Conference and conducted an on-stage keynote interview with Facebook Chief Executive Officer Mark Zuckerberg. You might have read a thing or two about it.

Needless to say, I think the negative response to the interview was, well, overdone. But I don't intend to rehash the episode here. I've done that elsewhere.

With my experience as a backdrop, however, I did come away with a handful of observations about the state of the emerging, consumer-focused Internet we refer to as Web 2.0.

1. There's a dearth of innovation online right now. The Valley typically works in peaks and troughs of creativity. In the early 2000s, the Web 2.0 movement was in a stunning state of breakthrough innovation. This is the period that gave rise to some of today's most successful sites and companies such as Facebook, Digg, YouTube, and Flickr.

These days, many of Silicon Valley's best and brightest are working hard to turn their visions into sustainable businesses, or they're toiling away within the larger companies like Google (GOOG) and Yahoo (YHOO) that bought them out early on. Before long, many of the folks who built Bebo into the third-largest social network after News Corp.'s (NWS) MySpace and Facebook will be striving to help Time Warner's (TWX) AOL make good on its $850 million purchase (BusinessWeek.com, 3/13/08), announced Mar. 13.

But there was no breakout company at this year's SXSW. If there had been, and if there were more innovation on the Web in general, there would have been a lot more for reporters and bloggers to write about than the style of questioning in the Zuckerberg interview.

2. Twitter is as socially transformative as blogging. My experience aside (many Twitter users were not kind), this is breakthrough technology. Ever since I've started using the microblogging site, I've loved it. I've found it a mind-bogglingly efficient way to keep in touch with a large number of people. If you follow a friend on Twitter, you never start a conversation with "What's up?" because you know what's up. Instead you ask something like, "How was the dentist this morning?" It fosters an intimacy rarely seen outside a college or collaborative work setting. What's more, a microblog is easier to write and digest, making the barriers to Twitter low.

Sure, Twitter has a downside: a unique ability to beam users' every unfiltered, nasty thought instantly over the Web, where it will live forever and prompt the mob to pile on. It's as close as you can get to reading someone's mind—and it isn't always pretty.

But don't blame Twitter. Social technologies are neither good nor evil, though they do make it easier for people to act on their base instincts. Sometimes short blogs, texts, and e-mails are negative and mean-spirited, and often they're kind, supportive, and compassionate. (I got far more of the latter than the former in Austin.) Think about how Twitter is used to spread breaking news, rally users around a worthwhile cause, or help you find the best party at a conference. Twitter was the breakout site of last year's SXSW. This year it proved why.

3. Bridging the gap between the Web and business communities isn't easy. The Valley is rife with stories of geeky kids who hit on a great idea, then turned it into a business. Likewise the conferences that showcase what these casual groups of passionate visionaries produce often morph into more businesslike, dealmaking affairs.