SXSW's location-tagging smackdown
Foursquare and Gowalla are squaring off for the title of top tagger at Austin's annual tech-fest. — By Caroline Waxler, contributor — The annual South By Southwest Interactive conference kicks off Friday and the advance buzz is all about a fierce …
Context & Ripple Effects
SXSW has form as the place where a social app stops being a demo and becomes a habit: the Dodgeball versus Twitter showdown played out here in 2007, and by last year's festival attendees were already debating Twitter saturation rather than discovery. Foursquare arrives in Austin on real momentum — it passed one million check-ins per week in February with its rate doubling over a month, locked a Bravo TV partnership integrating shows into its game layer, and aired its first television commercial on the network in late February.
Gowalla enters the same arena chasing the identical early-adopter crowd, while the category carries baggage into the weekend: February's Please Rob Me episode turned public check-ins into a robbery-risk talking point, forcing Foursquare to publicly insist it takes user privacy seriously. The fight is thus over more than badge bragging rights — it is over which service converts a festival audience before the privacy story hardens.
First-order effects
- Whichever of Foursquare or Gowalla wins more Austin sign-ups this week inherits the influencer halo that previously launched Twitter out of SXSW — and Foursquare's Bravo tie-up gives it a mainstream-media channel Gowalla has yet to match.
- The Please Rob Me controversy follows both services into Austin, putting immediate pressure on their default sharing settings just as thousands of new users are checking in publicly.
Second-order effects
- Broadcast partners like Bravo get a live test of whether check-in games drive tune-in, which will decide whether entertainment brands treat location services as marketing spend or novelty.
- The loser faces a narrowing path: with the iPhone confirmed as Foursquare's dominant client base, rivals need either exclusive features or new platforms to avoid being squeezed into niche status.
Third-order effects
- If the Twitter precedent repeats, SXSW cements its role as the industry's annual launch gate, where one weekend of conference buzz matters more than months of product development.
- A clear winner would push location tagging from game mechanics toward infrastructure — a check-in layer other services and advertisers build on, with privacy defaults set by whoever owns the habit.
The trend: SXSW is reprising its role as the breakout stage for social apps, shifting from microblogging's Twitter moment toward a check-in showdown between Foursquare and Gowalla.