Most years, the expectation is that
SXSW Interactive will be the launch pad for the year’s hot new app or service (indeed, Twitter and Foursquare debuted here). While pre-conference buzz hinted at the breakthrough potential of various technologies, 2012 might best be remembered as the year that “killer apps” were overshadowed by overarching and forward-looking themes. Below are some of the key ideas from this week’s conference.
Bettering the World: Gen Ys believe that
innovation is key to saving the planet. Among the tech crowd, there’s
no lack of ideas for how to accomplish this. Napster founder Sean Parker and former VP Al Gore discussed technology’s ability to facilitate direct democracy, citing political startups such as
NationBuilder,
Votizen, and
Causes.
Code for America founder Jennifer Pahlka laid out a new opportunity for techies to serve their country by designing simple, beautiful, and intuitive interfaces, and also lauded the growth potential of civic startups like
See Click Fix and
NeighborGoods. Unsurprisingly, game mechanics were often referenced as a behavioral motivator, with online application
Recyclebank and
Jane McGonigal’s SuperBetter serving as prime examples.
Blogging Code of Conduct: A debate about the responsibility of online curators and aggregators to credit those who generate or uncover original content has
heated up. Two proposals aiming to standardize online attribution
were launched during SXSWi. “Cultural curator” Maria Popova—best known by her blog/Twitter handle,
Brain Pickings—announced the
Curator’s Code, a system of symbols that allows bloggers to express where content originates. Meanwhile, Ad Age media columnist Simon Dumenco, along with editors from the likes of The Atlantic and Esquire, formed the
Council on Ethical Blogging and Aggregation. While
many scoffed at the notion of taming the blogosphere, giving credit where credit is due continues to be a hot button issue.
Privacy: Pre-conference
forecasts held that ambient social apps such as
Glancee and
Banjo would be this year’s most buzzed about products (indeed, social app
Highlight broke through the
clutter). But on the heels of The White House’s “
Privacy Bill of Rights,”
consumer privacy and protection took center stage. Identity management tool Gliph launched a
new mobile app that allows users to offer pseudonyms, rather than entire social profiles, to new acquaintances.
Personal, just one of a new wave of personal data vaults, enables users to store and control their digital information, from passwords to emergency contacts. Meanwhile, photo-sharing tool
deGeo allows for the removal of embedded geotags before sharing photos online.
