As the South by Southwest Interactive conference winds down, the tech-loving attendees are still talking about it on Twitter. This year, enterprise crowdsourcing platform CrowdFlower launched a sentiment analysis project that relied on manpower, not computer analytics, to gauge the mood of the crowd.
Launch a social media campaign that will build your brand and deliver results in our online Social Media Marketing Boot Camp starting June 7. Speakers include Abigail Cusick (Bravo Digital), Gregory Galant (Sawhorse Media), Alex Leo (Thomson Reuters Digital), Jim Tobin (Ignite Social Media), and many more. Read the reviews. 
In a rare public appearance at the South by Southwest Interactive conference, Pinterest CEO Ben Silbermann gave attendees a preview of upcoming features and addressed some of the copyright concerns surrounding the image-sharing site. Fast Company had the details:
South by Southwest is approaching fast, and it’s unique hybrid of cutting edge independent music and state of the art technology has given birth to all sorts of trends, including Twitter and Foursquare. A recent infographic looks at the effect of South by Southwest on the artists who perform there — how do their social networking fans erupt after the show? How do some artists’ fans grow as they perform?
A software service tool for employees and business managers called Teamly made its commercial launch today after 9 months of beta trials. The software helps to manage and track tasks for individuals or organizations, because it breaks down your projects into day/week/month tasks. As well as mobile apps, Teamly will be integrating with other popular platforms and products such as Microsoft Outlook, Google Apps and Salesforce.com.
Mario Bros. fans, rejoice! A new film bumper called “Mario”, that features the overall-clad Italian in real life, is spreading like wildfire this week after being showcased at SXSW.
CNN and Vimeo teamed up this year to let hand-selected iReporters and Vimeo filmmakers cover the SXSW Conferences and Festivals from their own perspectives. Find out more and watch the resulting video diary after the jump.
The winners of the inaugural edition of the CNN iReport Awards were announced Tuesday at the CNN Grill at the 2011 South by Southwest conference in Austin, Texas, by CNN.com participation director Lila King. They were:
Breaking News Coverage: Michael Roberts, early images of Deepwater Horizon fire;
Original Reporting: Percy von Lipinski, bison as pet;
Compelling Imagery (Photos or Video): Mugur Vărzariu, Abandon Valley;
Commentary: James Amerson, Dear Gulf, I’ll miss you;
Personal Story: Faithe Chu, My escape from Vietnam;
Interview: Tristan Macaraeg, 16-year-old interviews classmate on living in foster care;
Community Choice: Samantha Bolton; and
iReport Spirit Awards: Janie Lambert, Julio Ortiz-Teissonniere, Omékongo Dibinga, Shari Atukorala, and Sherbien Dacalanio.
Sure enough, the topical question changed to whether Circles was a trumped-up story or ReadWriteWeb simply jumped the gun. TechCrunch speculated that Circles is a true and will be introduced over a period of time, more accurately, than all at once.
Bravo will preview upcoming music-competition series Platinum Hit during a March 16 panel at South by Southwest, How to Become the Next Big Hitmaker, and the cable network teamed up with foursquare to allow fans to unlock a special Platinum Hit badge by using the location-based mobile app to check in at various locations in Austin, Texas, Broadcasting & Cable reported.
Fans who earn the badge will be eligible to attend a meet-and-greet with Jewel, the host and judge of Platinum Hit, at the Spin Loft March 17, with the first 90 being admitted, according to B&C.
Bravo also teamed up with foursquare for its Watch What Happens Live New Year’s Eve special.
The short history of foursquare contains several ties to South by Southwest, so it’s only fitting that the location-based mobile app will ring in this year’s SXSW by releasing version 3.0 for Android and iPhone devices Tuesday night.
One of the most prominent new features in the updated app is an Explore tab, which offers suggestions based on users’ previous visited places, friends’ visited places, users’ trends, time of day, and other factors.
Highlights from a post by co-founder Dennis Crowley on the foursquare Blog:
It was almost exactly two years today that Naveen Selvadurai and I flipped the switch on foursquare, jumped on a plane to Austin, and introduced the folks at SXSW 2009 to our idea of “turning life into a game.” We’ve told the story a number of times, but we really had no idea whether people would dig the “check-ins and game mechanics” model or laugh us out of Texas. As it turned out, a lot of people loved it. By the time we got back to New York, we had 5,000 users. We started a company, raised a round of funding, and hired a bunch of the smartest people we could find.
Last year, we came back to Austin with a slightly bigger team (12 of us!) and more confidence in our ideas. Not only were people digging the “life as a game” idea, but we were seeing foursquare badges actually driving people to do things (“Gym Rat” badge, anyone?), we saw mayorships encouraging loyalty at coffee shops and restaurants, and merchants starting to reward people for their check-ins (“free coffee for the Mayor!”). It wasn’t hard to see how the social utility of check-ins, tips, and to-dos were starting to change the way people experienced both familiar neighborhoods and new cities. We launched “Trending” at SXSW 2010 — a way to see where a critical mass of people were checked in — and watched as people at SXSW used it as a “sixth sense” to know when it was time to switch parties and as a way to choose which panels to gravitate toward. We left Austin last year with just under 500,000 users.
