Local Texans in Austin are either grumbling about the slew of youths and db’s about to infiltrate their fair city, or rubbing their palms together for the tourist payday as the 24^th Annual Music & Media Conference, South By Southwest, gets going (or should I say, growing). With social media, networking, technology, branding power, and everything else expanding faster than child obesity, so does SXSW and the amount of attendees.

The Interactive and Film portion kicked off on March 12^th with trade shows, conferences, discussion panels, celebrity interviews, and film screenings, industry parties, etc. The big balls officially drop on the 17^th, as bands from far and wide will melodically mount and rotate the 80-plus stages in downtown Austin. It’s hard to imagine the scope of planning that goes into the non-stop schedule, and if you think you have your itinerary all mapped out, think again. It’s going to get messy once the texts start pouring in – “Go see this show”, “Come to such-and-such film” – and your days become 90% planning, totally souring what should be a liberating mood.

So, we can all count our blessings for phones with email and the “what-the-f*ck did we do before” invention of text…but, like the dearly departed Corey Haim, everything has its limits. For example, if you’re at SXSW, you might text a group of friends, and then you get a text back, you respond, you get one from someone else and you fill them in on what you already heard back, and thus begins the chaotic cycle of simply trying to meet up with your goddamned friends. Sucks to be popular, don’t it?!?

Well, for you high-in-social-demand types, scratch the above time-consuming malarkey. With the new Brightkite Group Text, you can hit all your loyal buddies at once and start a big old text-versation – including pics.  You can use it from your computer, iPhone, iPhone touch, even if you’re not a member of Brightkite. With it, you can still text back from your phone and it will go to everyone on the list in the Group Text. It’s like the “Reply All” of texting. But the awesome thread is still saved with Brightkite, if – unthinkable as it seems – you can’t remember last night.

But for those of you looking to downsize your phone bill, you can cancel that bastard and use Brightkite’s Group Text for all your texting needs. Then meet up with your friends and borrow their phone!  Bite me, Verizon – can you hear me now, bitch?

If you haven’t already read the previous piece by Sunil on the Chatroulette site, let me give you a short breakdown. Chatroulette is a video chat-based “networking” site, consisting of two windows for video. The top window will be a random stranger from anywhere in the world, and the bottom window is you. To the right there is a text window. You can turn your video off, but you won’t be getting any action on this site without it. Sunil and I had different ideas about whether this site gets a thumbs-up…which has a whole different meaning if you spend enough time on Chatroulette.

My review is slightly tainted after finding myself more often than not coming “face to dick” rather than “face to face” with these strangers. Sunil found the site “unorganized”, but I think the better term might be primitive. You can “Next” people, “Report” people, or “Stop” – that’s about it.  To me, this is actually VERY organized. I had to give my dad a tutorial on Facebook, which might be user-friendly to the networking generation, but Chatroulette is an attractive site for people that find all the profiling and posting and gifting and fanning and following…overwhelming. And for people who don’t want a profile for one reason or another, there is another turn-on – no membership required! No email and no password, no way to trace or block anyone who disobeys the site’s BS clause forbidding obscene or pornographic material.

I couldn’t get the site to see my built-in camera. While I was problem solving, I figured I could get some help from this great network of people. But with strangers not being able to see me, I got skipped before I could even type “WAIT, HELP” or “Having technical difficulties.” Jeff Foxworthy’s doppelganger skipped me. He appeared to be networking from a suburban, country home den, the kind where your quiet and “keeps-to-himself” neighbor researches the anatomy of young children in a hidden cellar. Read the rest of this entry »

We are taking a break from our regularly scheduled programming today in order to honor (and attend) the Second Annual Shorty Awards! The awards ceremony will honor the best represented personalities and social media elites on Twitter, and all winners will give their acceptance speeches in 140 characters or less. Please join us virtually (or vicariously) by going to the official site to watch the streaming video of the ceremony, beginning at 7:30pm EST tonight. You can also follow the @ShortyAwards on Twitter and Facebook.

For more background on the ceremony, please revisit Rocky’s post on the nominees! Join us later in the week for all of the insider details too hot for other social media news sites (we may even name names and provide photographic evidence of debauchery…).

Stay tuned!