The South by Southwest Film + Interactive festival in Austin, Tx. has long been a place for new media companies to launch new products and get noticed. Now, Twitter users at the event are collectively presenting a picture of which are garnering the most attention.
Using the Cision Social Media Dashboard, I analyzed all tweets containing the term “sxsw”, the shorthand name for the festival, from the first two days of the event (March 13 and 14). There were more than 58,000 mentions. Next, I decided to filter those results with the names of all companies with booths on the trade show floor, creating a live feed indicating which are generating the most chatter.
Interestingly, only about 2 percent of tweets containing “sxsw” also contained the name of a company exhibiting there. That makes sense since there’s a lot going on outside of the trade show, such as panel discussions, awards presentations, networking events and parties (“Trade Show Bar” was a fairly hot topic). Still, more than 1,000 tweets did mention the name of an exhibitor. Of those, many were actively trying to use Twitter to attract people to their booths, providing an interesting case study in using the microblogging service for outreach. These brands have attracted anywhere between a couple dozen and hundreds of tweets so far. Out of more than 100 firms there, here are the top 10 most talked about on Twitter:
1. Google Clearly SXSW-goers use a lot of Google services, which they’re mentioning frequently (an unofficial morning jogging group offers a Google Map of its route). But even filtering out those types of messages, Google still leads in Twitter chatter at the festival. Some tweeted about a panel discussion on Quick Response and Mobile Tagging technologies that included a Google engineer. These technologies enable some mobile phone users to scan a barcode on a physical object, an item in a store for example, and be automatically directed to a Web site with more information about the product.
2. ServerBeach The Web hosting company is using Twitter to direct attendees toward its trade show booth for giveaways.
3. Trustworthy The social media monitoring startup is having a drawing for a free iPod Touch to be given to someone who has mentioned the company in a tweet.
4. OtherInbox This e-mail management software company is launching at SXSW and has been answering questions about its product on Twitter from the trade show floor.
5. Blellow A collaboration tool that offers a job board for writers, Web designers and software programmers and facilitates cooperation on projects.
6. PeoplePond is another startup firm launching at SXSW. It offers SEO for individuals who want to take ownership of their online identities.
7. Sony made a splash at the show by giving away 10 Webbie HD video cameras to bloggers who would film the goings on.
8. OrgSync makes collaborative software geared toward universities.
9. Porter Novelli The public relations and marketing company set up a Twitter account specifically for live-tweeting the event: @PN_ATX
10. The Austin Chronicle The alternative weekly newspaper published a special issue for SXSW.
Also, here are some of the most talked-about blog posts written from Austin:
At SXSW Smartphones Rule, Notebooks Drool by Stacey Higginbotham, GigaOm
SXSW: AT&T’s Spotty Service Frustrates iPhone Users by Michael Calore, Wired.com’s Epicenter blog
SXSW: Privacy (and publicness) by Jeff Jarvis, Buzzmachine
SXSW Panel: Don’t worry kids, the news business isn’t going to die by Nicholas Deleon, CrunchGear
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Tags: Austin Chronicle, Blellow, Google, OrgSync, OtherInbox, PeoplePond, Porter Novelli, ServerBeach, social media monitoring, Sony, SXSW, Trustworthy, Twitter
Cool post…can you tell me where Overlay.TV showed up on that list? We were trying, but also trying not to be spammy…
Thanks for reaching out Ben. I took a look back at the feed and Overlay.TV came in tied for 12th with Rackspace Cloud. Microsoft Silverlight was 11th.
[...] This year we did it a little different. As you know from the last couple of posts on our blog, ServerBeach tag-teamed the event with Lisa Sabin-Wilson. We held a Twitter Trivia contest daily for SXSW attendees, which required them to bring the answer to the trivia question that we “tweeted” to Lisa at the booth and if the answer was correct, Lisa gave them an autographed WordPress for Dummies book. With Lisa with us, an iPod giveaway, cool, free swag, our event there was a total success and we were listed as one of the “Top 10 Companies Most Discussed on Twitter at South by Southwest“! [...]
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[...] people tweet @trustworthy and #sxsw to enter. We had a great number of entries helping us become the third most-tweeted about company at SXSW. Christine [...]
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[...] company blog is hosted at WordPress.com, as well. As a result, ServerBeach was listed as “Top 10 Companies Most Discussed on Twitter at South by Southwest“! We are proud to have them as an official sponsor of WordCamp Chicago ‘09 and send out a [...]
[...] More details from his post on the Cision Blog. [...]
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Interesting post. And google was still number 1..