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SXSW: No 'Hot Apps' Anymore But Still a Launchpad For Some Startups (axios.com)
South by Southwest is no longer the preferred launchpad for social apps, but it may be for others like Blue Duck, a San Antonio-based transportation company debuting its scooter service this weekend. From a report: Between Twitter's big breakout moment in 2007 and Meerkat's in 2015, SXSW has served as a great marketing opportunity for social apps. But that's ended as consumer trends have shifted and Hollywood and other consumer companies have taken over the festival. Standing outside the Austin Convention Center, co-founder Eric Bell tells me that he came up with the idea out of frustration with his local public transit, and he designed the scooters. For now, the company is self-funded, but he expects to soon raise outside funding.
It used to be a music festival. Someone *else* took over first.
A kickstarter won't help. Federal funding might.
---- Teach Peace. It's Cheaper Than War.
ftfy
Less "apps", more naps
Stink Train, the game where you use your analytical abilities to avoid sitting next to smelly people on the train
Biggest scam around nowadays. Basically all the panel spaces and at least 1/4 of the floorspace has been take over by non-comic entertainment industry crap (maybe more, I haven't been able to get tickets in a decade!)
This is the double edged sword of success: If you get enough money to stay in business mission creep overtakes the original goals of your convention and it eventually becomes a vessel for every type of entertainment except the one it was originally targetted at.
This is like something straight from Dilbert. Oh wait, it IS something straight from Dilbert.
How much demand is there for more social apps?
Why the locals here in Austin call it South By So What.
the best part of the interactive portion is when it starts to turn into the music festival. For about 1.5 days you get the music people crossed with the nerds. It's a pretty funny juxtaposition. I went a few years ago, it's very big so unless you go with a specific agenda it's overwhelming. THe highlight when i went was stumbling into a small room of about 20 where some pinterest engineers were talking about how the scaled as Pinterest started taking off. I loved all their stories like "well, see, the main server was my chair for a while.. then we tried X but that didn't work so we switched to Y and that worked for about a week then we heard about Z so we tried that but.." It was very informative and entertaining.
I came to the datacenter drunk with a fake ID, don't you want to be just like me?
You donâ(TM)t need to steal from me via taxation to give it to a company.
It went over your head that public transportation requires public funds. Watch what happens when you cut off those funds. Oh, wait, see the billions in road funds rather than rail, and mindless numbers of federally funded airports. Pick one.
---- Teach Peace. It's Cheaper Than War.
When SXSW decided to focus on the color of the people making the apps instead of the apps themselves. That's when they became irrelevant.