Virtual worlds have had some real problems. Google, for instance, recently shut down an animated environment called Lively only five months after it was announced. And Linden Lab, whose Second Life online community was once front-page news, has neither reached many mainstream consumers nor created an important meeting place for corporate users.
One of the hottest technologies in Silicon Valley is also one of the simplest. The online service from Web start-up Twitter Inc. prompts users to do one thing: answer the question, “What are you doing?” in 140 characters or less.
These days, Twitter is a worldwide phenomenon, a household name, and has even spawned a verb, “to Tweet.” But before the second week of March of last year, when thousands of geeks began arriving in Austin, Texas, for the South by Southwest Interactive festival (SXSWi), few people had even heard of the nascent microblogging service. Within days, however, Twitter had taken the conference by storm. The story of how Twitter took over SXSWi, and how it spread to the outside world because of the many influential early adopters in attendance, is well known. Whether it’s because of Twitter’s SXSWi emergence or all things cybergroovy becoming part of pop culture, one thing is certain: SXSWi has gone mainstream. Does that mean it’s also lost its edge?
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