We’re just now feeling recovered from SXSW (see our Best of: Austin SXSW recap), the annual Texan tech conference, which draws Internet lovers from across the globe.

During the 5-day conference, everyone was buzzing about popular apps like Highlight, a location-based, social networking app and Lanyrd, an events planning app that leverages your social connections on Twitter to deliver relevant panels. In fact, these were the two “winning apps” of SXSW, according to LaunchRock, the San Francisco-based startup that helps other startups build an audience with alluring, tweet-inducing launch pages and Crosswa.lk, a.k.a. the “Pandora for apps”–a discovery tool that taps your social network to create a springboard for finding download-worthy apps.

Today, Crosswa.lk and LaunchRock published a list of results from SXSW titled: Who’s Winning Austin, based on data from Crosswa.lk verified downloads. The score is based on % user growth during the conference.

While Lanyrd and Highlight top the list, at 33% and 26% user growth, respectively, WOMzit, an app I’ve literally never heard of came in 3rd, with an increased user base of 21%. At first glance, WOMzit doesn’t look half bad, billing itself as “the Word-Of-Mouth app –a fun, fast and frictionless way for you to spread your recommendations.” (Surprisingly, it has nothing to do with face acne.)

The data is somewhat misleading because apps with more users like Path and Pinterest, which grew just 3% and 5% respectively had larger pre-SXSW install bases. Thomas McLeod, Crosswa.lk’s President and co-founder explains that in order to collect the data, they tracked what apps saw the most growth relative to their actual download sizes during the run of SXSW across Crosswa.lk’s whole site.

“In short you can immediately tell that social based discovery ruled the roost, but some established brands like Task Rabbit, Soundcloud, and Turntable managed to capitalize on having a strong presence during SXSW as well,” he says.

Check out the full set of rankings at the link below. You’ll also be able to see the number of people on Crosswa.lk with the app and the number who have “Loved” it.

➤ Who’s Winning Austin

Liked this? Check out The Ultimate SXSW infographic here.

And read all of our SXSW coverage here.

As tech enthusiasts and entrepreneurs nursed their hangovers and headed home after SXSW Interactive, there were still newsworthy launches, panels, and campaigns going on at SXSW Music. MOG hinted at its future revenue streams, Sean Parker predicted the fall of iTunes, and products launched from Rap Genius, Monstro, and others.

The second half of SXSW is much more about concerts than startups, but it’s the only place to see next year’s buzz bands while making business connections. Luckily for those who missed it, or slept through the business hours, I survived the 11-day marathon of the two conferences back-to-back to bring you this breakdown of what the tech world needs to know about SXSW Music.

Panels

MOG CEO Discusses Interest In Exclusive Content and Automobiles - During the Social Music Strategies panel, MOG‘s CEO David Hyman joked that when Howard Stern’s contract with Sirius XM Radio ends, he’ll try sign him to MOG. Afterwards Hyman told me Stern would probably be too expensive but that “we’re big enough to start acquiring unique content”. The streaming service’s first in-car integration recently shipped with new BMWs, and Hyman told me he wants non-music such as audio books on MOG to give drivers more listening options. Hyman didn’t mention anything about being acquired, though AllThingsD says that HTC is close to buying the company through its Beats headphones subsidiary.

Sean Parker Says Spotify Will Overtake iTunes In 2 Years – In his on-stage interview, Napster co-founder and Spotify director Sean Parker said Spotify will earn more revenue for the music business than iTunes within 2 years. Billboard’s Glenn Peoples did some excellent digging into the numbers. He determined that for Spotify to beat iTunes’ projected $2.08 billion in 2013 revenues, it would need 12.34 million paying subscribers plus advertising revenue. As of 2 months ago Spotify had 3 million subscribers.

Product Launches

Rap Genius Verified Accounts, Official Lyric Meanings - The crowd-sourced lyric explanation site Rap Genius began verifying the identities of musicians featured on its site, and allowing them to provide official backstories on their songs. Rapper Nas was the first, offering breakdowns of his similes and tales of how he met the characters in his rhymes.

A huge volume of web searches are for lyrics, and providing meanings straight from their authors could make Rap Genius a premier destination. The startup has also recently branched out into hosting explanations for rock songs by Bon Iver and others in what it calls Stereo IQ.

Monstro’s SXSW Charts Show and Stream Popular Artists – Music discovery site Monstro tabulated all the SXSW Music-related tweets to compile charts of who were the most talked about artists by day, genre, and across the festival. Dubstep king Skrillex was crowned most talked about. From a consumer end the service doesn’t sound too monetizable, but co-founder Jeff Fedor told me the company will make money selling data to the record labels like successful startups Next Big Sound and Big Champagne (which sold to Live Nation).

Billboard To Include Data From BandPage, Spotify, and More – Stalwart music popularity chart Billboard will begin integrating data from music streaming services Spotify, Rhapsody, Rdio, MOG, Slacker, and Cricket, Hypebot reports that Billboard told the Wall Street Journal. Facebook music profile app BandPage which now supports 500,000 artists will also provide data to Billboard on upcoming acts.

Parties

One way to tell which companies are serious about competing in the crowded music space is to look for who has a big presence at SXSW Music. MOG featured well-known headliner The Roots at its day party, which could signal financial optimism from rumored talks to be acquired by HTC. Spotify put on 5 days of concerts from smaller acts at a dedicated venue. Turntable.fm’s parties were the hardest to get into, packing tiny venue’s with fan favorites like Flying Lotus, Diplo, and ?uestlove.

Though not as showy as its show last year with Kanye West and Jay-Z , VEVO paid for a huge gig from Nas and Sleigh Bells. The music video distributor also teamed up with Nike FuelBand for a series of dance parties with Major Lazer and Girl Talk at an impressive venue where the lights responded to the physical exertion of the crowd.

Though it didn’t feature big-name acts, BandPage provided a crucial service to attendees. When the bars closed and the streets filled but nobody wanted to go home, many ended up at the BandPage HQ which featured DJs spinning until 3 or 4am for 9 straight nights in a laser-filled auto shop.

If it didn’t come on the heels of the deathly-exhausting Interactive conference, SXSW Music would be a dreamland of business and pleasure. Instead most tech folks and journalists tell me “I’ll go next year”. Well, sack up. It’s too good to miss.

TechCrunch TV talked to Path co-founder and CEO Dave Morin last week while we were at the South By Southwest Interactive conference in Austin, Texas. It’s always interesting to talk to Morin, who is widely regarded as one of the most well-connected and in-the-know entrepreneurs in today’s web startup landscape.

The first part of our interview (which you can watch in the video embedded above) was dedicated to the latest update to the Path app, version 2.1, which was released earlier this month. Morin also touched on Path’s API strategy — the company has opened its API to its first third-party partner, Nike, and expects to announce more in the months ahead. We also got his thoughts on what Facebook’s IPO will mean for the startup world (Morin was an early Facebook employee before striking out to start a company of his own), his favorite apps of the moment (he is yet another of Highlight’s big-name fans), and Path’s rumored plans to raise another round of funding.

Opinions on the new break-out social location app Highlight certainly aren’t in short supply.

Alexia thinks that friend-of-friend notifications should be customizable and that women may have trouble getting on board with the idea of constantly broadcasting their location. Eldon thinks that Highlight goes past social networking to be a potential business card swapping service, leaps ahead of a similar style app called Bump. He also thinks that the new update is quite clever. Then of course, Mr. Butcher over in the UK thinks that Highlight is a recruiter’s wet dream, while 500 Startups mentor Brenden Mulligan feels like SXSW wasn’t necessarily the best launchpad for Highlight.

But a few extra thoughts on the SXSW sweetheart can’t hurt, right?

That’s why The Daily tech writer Nicholas Deleon and I sat down in the studio to chat it out. Nick seems cynical about the app’s mainstream attractiveness, while I’m wondering whether or not we actually want or need yet another social network.

It’s a tough call to make, predicting the future of a product, and this one seemed more difficult than ever.

What kind of tech startup can be built over four days, while riding across the country on a bumpy bus with somewhat dodgy Wi-Fi? That’s what the people who took the StartupBus to Austin, Texas for the South By Southwest Interactive conference found out.

The StartupBus had its biggest year ever this year, with busloads of hacker-entrepreneurs from 11 regions in North America coding their way down to SxSWi with the goal of launching a minimum viable web app by the time they arrived in Austin.

Last Sunday, a select group of the best StartupBus apps came together to pitch their work to a panel of potential investors. The winner was Cerealize, a website that lets you mix your own custom blended breakfast cereal and ships a box to your home. Watch the Cerealize team pitch their product to TechCrunch TV in the video embedded above, as well as the moment they were announced the winners of the StartupBus Grand Finals (the Grand Finals bit was shot by videographer Andy Newman.)

And below you can watch the entire footage of the StartupBus Grand Finals, to see pitches from Bumper Crop, Curious City, Gourmair, Happstr, Scoringo, Spott, as well as Cerealize.

Also, TechCrunch TV’s very own John Murillo rode the StartupBus all the way from San Francisco to Austin, and shot some great daily recaps of the entire trip:

• Day One: San Francisco to Indio, California

• Day Two: Indio, California to Las Cruces, New Mexico

• Day Three: Las Cruces, New Mexico to San Antonio, Texas

• Day Four: San Antonio, Texas to Austin, Texas

[Editor’s Note: Brenden Mulligan is an entrepreneur who created Onesheet, TipList, ArtistData, MorningPics, and PhotoPile. He’s a mentor for 500 Startups and several startups. You can find him on Twitter at @mulligan.]

Highlight is one of the most talked about apps out there. It was touted to be the breakout app at this year’s SXSW. But it wasn’t. In fact, almost everyone I’ve talked to who used it ended up turning it off or uninstalling it.

(The same probably goes for Glancee, Sonar, etc.. but I only really tried and talked about Highlight.)

I’ve had many discussions about the app and most have been really polarizing. Either people love the idea, or absolutely hate the idea. I find myself trying to have a more balanced opinion. Although I uninstalled it the first day, I think the overall concept of Highlight is interesting and with enough adoption, could be compelling for the right user.

But SXSW was the wrong place for it to break. Here’s why.

Battery Drain Fear

Some people experienced this, some didn’t. I installed Highlight the week before SXSW and my battery drained faster than I remember prior, so I uninstalled it. There’s a very good chance that wasn’t Highlight’s fault, but my mind was set up to think it probably was. And for SXSW, battery life is a priority.

SXSW is a week when most people buy $50-100 battery extenders because everyone is out and using their phone to communicate for hours on end. The thought of installing an app that drains the battery at all is counter intuitive. I know a lot of people who didn’t even try the app just because they had heard it decreased battery life. Until there’s a Mophie for Mophie, this fear might have greatly reduced the chance of many people even giving it a try.

Relevance

When you release an app, you want it to feel useful from the beginning. Lots of apps will do extensive alpha testing so when people can finally sign up at random, there is content/activity already visible. Some teams keep apps invitation only for a long time so when people are invited, there’s almost a guarantee a friend already uses it. These are parts of onboarding, and they are important. Pinterest is still invite only. That’s not because they’re lazy.

Once the user is in an app, it should continually feel useful. If I install an app, and never get any kind of value from it, I forget about it. So it makes sense that Highlight decided to set the bar very low when notifiying users about potential connections. That led to more notifications sent, which in theory results in more user happiness.

Unfortunately, that’s not the way it works for this kind of app and led to a lot of notifications with value at the level of: “You were nearby Sarah. You both like music. Connect?” Yawn.

On Instagram, the average user would rather get “10 random people liked your photo” than just “One good friend liked your photo” because it makes them feel special and gets them to create more content.

But on services like Highlight, most people would rather get one extremely relevant notification about a possible connection than ten somewhat loose connections. If I walk past someone on the street and Highlight tells me they also like Sigur Ros, that’s not going to make me stop everything and connect with them. But if they like Sigur Ros, and we have 10 very solid friends in common, and are from the same town, then I get interested.

Highlight just set the bar too low. They know this, and they’re working on it. But they should have just raised it before SXSW.

SXSW is already too noisy

At SXSW, there are already too many people to see. Regardless of one’s social/professional status, there are probably tons of friends and acquaintances to catch up with. Meetings are serendipitous, not manufactured. This is why SXSW is wonderful. And this is also why Highlight just isn’t the right app for that environment.

Sure, there are some people who go to SXSW to meet people and dont have full schedules. But Highlight isn’t the answer here. Those people will find their way into parties and make an effort in person to network with people they didn’t have access to before. This perseverance is exactly what people respect. If instead, there was some app that allowed the stranger to send a DM from his room at the La Quinta Inn by the airport, then the whole dynamic would be off.

Curiosity != Need

Most of the tech early adopters download apps because they’ve heard an app is cool and they’re curious about why. Then, in the case of apps like Instagram, they are pulled into a cool interaction that leads to a cool community that is already filled with their friends.

But again, Highlight is different. Super early adopters (the ones that end up tweeting about cool apps) rarely need more friends. They want cool experiences to share with their existing friends. So when these early adopters (and many people at SXSW fit this profile) download an app like this, the main value prop of the app isn’t something that’s appealing.

So, if Highlight fails at SXSW, then where will it succeed?

I think not breaking at SXSW is a good thing for Highlight, Glancee, etc… Because these apps have a broader appeal than a networking conference. Example:

Some guy moves to Boston after graduating college. He rents into an apartment in the South End and on his first night, sits down alone in his apartment, with nothing to do. It’s not because he’s not interesting, it’s because he’s new and doesn’t know anyone. He opens Highlight, which tells him within 2 blocks is a guy that’s about his age, who is close friends with some people he went to high school with. And that guy also likes the same basketball team. And there is a game on that night. I can totally see that guy direct messaging the stranger and saying hello. At that point, why not?

So it’s not that I think Highlight wont work. It’s that I don’t think it was ready for prime time, and I don’t think SXSW was the right venue for it to prove itself. I’m not a user, but I’m not ready to write it off. I just probably won’t use it until it provides more value and less battery drain. And even if I never use it again, I don’t think I’m the right target anyway.

Ultimately, I’m really interested when this app gets to people who legitimately say “I want to meet more people” instead of “What’s all this Highlight buzz about?” Then I think we’ll see the app in the hands of people who need it, instead of those who are just curious.

Appendix: Highlight Logo Rant

As someone who appreciates design, I just can’t get past the stupid-ass multi-color logo. the font choice is fine, and the logo looks fine when monotone, but I hate hate hate the multi-colored version. It looks like it was thrown together by someone who doesn’t give a shit if they should be taken seriously and just discovered the Layers tool in Photoshop. I know that’s harsh, but come on.

Every year, before, during, and after South by Southwest, everyone’s eager declare someone the winner of the conference. Then comes the inevitable backlash, with questions about whether Popular App X will ever catch on with “regular people” — or if it’s just useful to techies who are constantly checking their iPhones in search of the next party.

For the second year in a row, mobile Q&A app Thumb (formerly known as Opinionaided) is offering its own take. It made a list of the apps that seemed to be getting buzz at the conference, then polled its users on whether they actually used the apps. The results (there were 4,700 responses total, with at least 220 for each question) are being pitched as an answer to the question, “Which SXSW Apps Do Real Americans Actually Use?”

Now, you could make a list of caveats to the results that’s longer than this post. For starters: Do we really think Thumb’s userbase is fully representative of “Real Americans”? And doesn’t the survey’s definition of “SXSW App” seem a bit arbitrary? But I have to admit, I was still curious about the results, so here they are. The most-used app seems to be Instagram (22 percent of respondents said they used it), followed by Spotify (14 percent), Waze (12 percent), and Foursquare (12 percent). Highlight, the app that many predicted would be this year’s big hit, was used by 5 percent of respondents.

Instagram’s victory is no surprise, given the rapid growth the company announced on-stage at SXSW. But if you want to argue about winners, it’s too bad Thumb didn’t ask about the Mophie juice pack.

The last time TechCrunch checked in with Brittany Morin was in mid-November 2011, when the former Googler had just debuted her own lifestyle brand, Brit Media, aimed at positioning herself as the “Martha Stewart of Silicon Valley.” So TechCrunch TV caught up with her earlier this week in Austin, Texas at the South By Southwest Interactive conference to find out how things have been shaping up since the launch and what her plans are for the months ahead.

According to Morin, visitor growth on her flagship HelloBrit.com website has been robust, but what a lot of people don’t realize is that’s just the beginning of her plan. She has assembled a small team of three engineers who are currently building custom Brit Media software and apps, the first of which will launch in beta this quarter.

Morin did not give us many details about the forthcoming apps, but said they will all fit back into the ‘Brit’ brand. As Alexia Tsotsis reported back in November, Morin had started turning the code written for her own wedding website into an app called “Weduary” that anyone could use to build a wedding site (it seems that building slick apps may be a family affair — Brittany Morin’s husband is Dave Morin, the co-founder and CEO of Path.) Weduary could very well be the first app launched under the Brit brand — but we’ll have to wait and see for sure.

Watch the interview above to see Brittany Morin talk in full about the upcoming apps, the latest lifestyle gadget she’s obsessed with, the possibility of raising outside funding, why Silicon Valley needs some “soft-core tech,” and more.

Some people are surprised when they find out that Getty Images is just 17 years old — its brand name has become such an institution in the image licensing and stock photography space that many people assume it’s been around for decades longer. But starting in 1995 just at the dawn of the Internet age does make it a veteran in many ways in the web photo space. So we were pleased to have the chance to interview Getty Images’ co-founder and CEO Jonathan Klein while he was at the South By Southwest Interactive conference in Austin, Texas this week to get his insights on how his company has grown up until this point and where it is headed in the months and years to come.

Watch the video above to get Klein’s thoughts on revenue models (“We may be old fashioned around here, but we actually think that people have to pay for content. We think that content creators also need to make a living”), enforcing intellectual property ownership (“[The music labels] did something that is unspeakable: They sued their fans and their customers”) and going with the flow (“The customer is not always right, but the customer is almost always ahead of you.”) There are plenty more bon mots where those came from, so please do watch the interview in full.

Feature image of Jonathan Klein courtesy of Flickr user Joi Ito

TaskRabbit, the online marketplace that lets people outsource small tasks and errands to others for negotiated fees, expanded operations into Austin, Texas this past week just in time for the South By Southwest Interactive conference.

TechCrunch TV caught up with TaskRabbit founder Leah Busque while at SxSW to get an update on how things are going for the company. Now that the Austin launch is out of the way, Busque said, going forward TaskRabbit will work on deepening its reach in Seattle and Portland. International growth — into London and Vancouver in particular — is also “on the horizon,” and could be launched by the end of the year, she said.

Watch the video interview above to get the full look at where TaskRabbit is going next, the company’s booming headcount (from 7 employees to 47 in the past year), and how life has been since she handed over the CEO title.