The conference was just kicked off by Dave McClure, and Charlene Li and Amit Kapur gave good talks. I’m Twittering here as things go along. I liked this first slide Dave used. Will also post a lot of others on Flickr. 
Category: The Web & Web 2.0 (Page 16 of 41)
Tomorrow morning early, I’m jumping on the 5 here in San Clemente and driving south an hour to downtown San Diego for O’Reilly’s Graphing Social Patterns conference. I’m looking forward to a great two-day program. 
Here’s the main page for the Facebook Group, which 200 people for far have joined saying they’re attending, and 81 more are "maybes." The event is being held in conjunction with O’Reilly’s ETech conference, which draws an even larger crowd. It also starts tomorrow (Monday, March 3), but it goes through Thursday. This will be about the third or fourth ETech I’ve atended, including the 2007 edition, for which I wrote this Conferenza review. It’s a geekfest of the highest order, and I’ll be attending through end of day Wednesday. So, two days GSP and one day ETech, and the evening events are common for both conferences. If you’re attending either one, I look forward to meeting.
Or so declares Fred Wilson. And I see Josh Kopelman’s on it, too. (Wonder which guy funded it, or both?) 
A buddy of mine gave me the heads-up in a comment a couple hours ago, to my previous post (see below), saying this could be the next big thing at SXSW.
What is it about this time of year? The Web 2.0 crowd just needs something new to get ’em talking? Okay, I’m tryin’ it — gotta see what this is about. Only took me a minute or two to set up my FriendFeed account. Looks kinda like a Twitter that ate its Wheaties… 🙂
Except, this year, aren’t they jumping the gun a bit? ETech and GSP come first, next week, ahead of SXSW. Anyone know how far in advance of SXSW it was last year when Twitter went live? Should be fun to see how long this one will take to break… 🙂
UPDATE (1:30 pm CST): Well, we now have the skinny on who’s behind this one — my friend Brian Solis just posted.
Howard Reingold put up an interesting list of reasons why he’s hooked on Twitter. My friend David Weinberger, another a-lister, then added a few more. I’ll add one they forgot: because it makes people feel important, that they’re part of something cool, the latest fad.
Microblogging-phenom Twitter took off like a rocket last year at the SXSW conference because the a-listers grabbed onto it, and then everybody who wanted to be like the a-listers, or see what they were talking about, jumped on.
The Twitter hype resulting from last year’s SXSW was almost deafening. I know many people tried it and later dropped it — but, as that same post says, people have discovered, after all the hype, that it’s actually a pretty cool way of staying in touch with your own circle of friends. (Include me in that camp — follow me on Twitter here.) And here’s the key: you can do it without having to answer. You got it — it’s a lurker’s dream come true!
But what will happen with Twitter at this year’s SXSW? Here’s a post that makes a case for Twitter hitting a million users by March, or possibly even sooner, before SXSW even gets underway. That’s a whole lot more than a-listers, folks. Twitter’s come a heck of a long way.
But will it still be "the thing to do" at this year’s event? Will all the cool kids still be using it so heavily? Or will some new, even-more-cool tool overshadow it? The beat goes on. I’ve already gotten one email pitch from some company saying they think they can be the Twitter of this year’s SXSW. I say good luck.
Twitter, whether it has SXSW mojo this year or not, seems to be crossing into mainstream use. Now if they can only figure out a way to make money, huh?
Aw, shucks — I owe it to all of you out there, my valued, loyal readers….sigh, sniff. Seriously, I don’t do this for glory, and Lord knows not for dollars. But it’s fun getting recognized like this, and it’s at least my second time, so I guess I should blog about it. 
This rating system was devised by Jonny Bentwood, a really smart analyst relations exec with Edelman PR in the UK. [He must be smart if he keeps including me, right?] And I seriously do believe that Edelman is the leading PR firm in the world, because they keep showing that they "get" new media better than any other firm out there in my view.
I got a kick out of seeing my friend Jeremiah Owyang, out in the Bay Area, get the #1 ranking. His Web Strategy blog has always been great, and this is the first Top 100 ranking since he became a senior analyst at Forrester, focusing in social media. They were very lucky to snag Jeremiah, and his blog is now naturally seeing rapid new growth in readership and influence. He’s also one of my favorite "follows" on Twitter. The man is a social media maniac! And, yes, that is a good thing… 🙂 His research and analysis just keep getting better and better.
Jonny Bentwood (I love the way he spells Jonny) compiles his Top 100 Analyst Blogs ranking from an analyst blog directory published by Tekrati, run by Barbara French out in NorCal. That directory starts here (with the "A" listings), and is quite comprehensive. [My two blogs are listed under "G" for the name of my company.] Barbara has an accomplished background in analyst relations, and has built an impressive business over the years, with one heck of a great web presence. She blogs regularly, too — of course.
Having been a freelance analyst and writer for some time, and having done analyst relations for at least one of the startups where I’ve headed marketing, I have a great affinity towards this profession — actually, for both sides of the fence. And blogging, I believe, has been a real boon to it, especially benefiting the customers, the users, of the research and analysis. And I know Barbara agrees with me on that.
I just want to say thanks again to my readers, seriously. It makes all the effort worthwhile just to get the emails that float in, out of the blue, from time to time, thanking me for my blog. (Just got one yesterday, from a smart young guy in San Diego who’s a fellow surfer and Surfrider Foundation supporter and heads a cool, new online travel business called Travature.) I always welcome your thoughts about my blog, whether in the comments or by emailing me at graeme (at) thickins (dot) com. I really do appreciate hearing from you. Cheers!
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