LaunchRock, the startup that wants to help companies launch by setting them up with viral launch pages, is also launching  a “Battle of the Startups” contest during SXSW. Companies that use LaunchRock pages to get beta signups will now have the chance to win $30K ($25K as a standard angel investment from collective VC firm Vencorps).

The contest is sponsored by LaunchRock, Sprout Social, Slate Studio, CloudSponge, HootSuite, Posterous, Rapleaf and VenCorps and consists of two parts: The first part is how many signups a startup is able to generate using the LaunchRock, up to $5K. The second consists of the VenCorps’ contribution, where LaunchRock startups who generate the most “social proof” via @ mentions in tweets and votes on Vencorps.com (from March 15th onwards) win 25K . Technically two different startups could win each contest.

Signups for the first part have already started, but the voting for the second will commence on March 15th and run through April 15th (sign up here). The top nine companies in terms of buzz will enter into the finals, and the winner of that contest will be announced on April 31st.

LaunchRock has also set up a leaderboard for SXSW startups on top of the Chupacabra at 400 E 6th Street and Trinity, and is ranking startups based on tweets in a number of categories. Right now it looks like Instagram is #winning in overall.

There are few things better than free beer. Mix that with melted cheese and toasted bread, and you have a combination that satisfies even the deepest of human desires. And they’re available just outside the main convention center at SXSW, both free of charge.

The food is being provided by GroupMe, the group messaging app that, along with competitors like Beluga and Fast Society, has received plenty of buzz in the buildup to SXSW. We swung by their food stand for an interview with cofounders Jared Hecht and Steve Martocci (and to grab some food for ourselves). Tune in to learn how things have gone for GroupMe so far in Austin, why they chose to give away grilled cheese sandwiches, and adventures in Phish concert parking lots.

Oh, and sorry for calling it “South by”. I hate when people do that.

Our friends at Checkin.to made us these awesome infographics to map out the first 12 hours of SXSWi check-ins. Using aggregated public checkins from Foursquare and Gowalla, they’ve built a beautiful visualization of activity from 6pm to 6am on Friday night in Austin, TX.

Checkin.to is just now on the cusp of transitioning from side project to seed-stage startup. The idea originated over 10 months ago at GoogleIO when hacker Zac Witte was in a taxi with a friend moving from one party to another.

“I know there are a lot of after-parties and if we could only use all that location data out there, we could find out where the best ones are,” Witter said.

Furthermore, Witte thought that if he could highlight the hotspots where people are that have also checked in at GoogleIO, he would run into people he had chatted with earlier in the day. As any hacker would do, he wrote up a little script to start collecting checkins posted on Twitter that weekend.

“I have a bit of an obsession with real-time data so Checkin.to has been a lot of fun for me to work on, but recently the focus has shifted more toward building a consumer product. I think there is an incredible wealth of information sitting in the databases of location services that isn’t being used to its fullest potential. My goal is to bring greater intelligence back to the users by communicating this data in such a way that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. We’re building great products that stay simple, concise, and beautiful. We have some very interesting plans for the future.” -Checkin.to Founder Zac Witte

They have both a web app and iPhone app that just went live, check it out here. The app helps you find the hot locations in real-time including who’s there and what they’re saying. “Find your Friends” using your Twitter following list and Foursquare friends. The iPhone release is a bare-bones utility for people to use at SXSW but Witte plans on focusing on mobile going forward. The web interface has more features including highlighting checkins from people you know and allowing you to share places you find on Twitter. You can also filter by category of place, names of people, and the keywords in their tweet. If you want a party, filter by “party” to see who’s talking about it. Checkin.to has collected over 73 million public checkins from nearly 2 million individual users and 2 million unique locations after merging data from Foursquare and Gowalla.

The first 48 hours of SXSWi infrographic will be coming soon, stay tuned.

At last year’s SXSW I caught a moment of Foursquare co-founder Naveen Selvadurai’s time to briefly chat about the company and their plans for the upcoming year. We were able to speak again this year and Naveen gave me the update on what has changed for the company since our last conversation.

The short answer is that both the company and user-base have grown significantly. When I last spoke with him there were around 300,000 people using Foursquare to check-in and now there are over 7 million users. That, coupled with their recent loyalty deal with American Express, means we should be on the lookout for expanded services and features in 2011. Check out the video below for the update.

Read More

It’s that time again: time to revel in Web 2.0! We’re teaming up with TUAW and Peel for our first annual SXSW Interactive reader meet-up in Austin. Meet the TC crew. Have a TC brew. Enjoy some TC chew (quantities limited). All this – and more – will be made available to you.

Please RSVP here and remember that its at 201 E 5th St Unit #108 [Map] (It’s a big loft) from 6pm to 10pm. Expect food, booze, and music plus Peel’s own brand of Interactive TV featuring the Peel Fruit. Plus fun. Lots of fun.

Today’s SXSW keynote speaker is Seth Priebatsch, founder and CEO of location-based gaming startup SCVNGR.

SCVNGR has had a big week — on Thursday the site launched a spinoff service called LevelUp that combines some of the retention mechanics seen in location-based games with the steep deals offered by sites like Groupon.

Priebatsch, who maintained an apparently super-human energy level throughout his talk, discussed how many of the gaming mechanics seen in the virtual world will be applied in the physical world to create a so-called “Game Layer”. “It’s brand new and has not been built,” Priebatsch says. “The last decade was the decade of social — it took connections between friends, family, and coworkers and put them online. It’s called Facebook. The social layer traffics in connections.” Conversely, Priebatsch says that the Game layer traffics in influence — “It will influence where we go, what we do, and how we do it.”

Next, Priebatsch outlined how many of the principles we associate with games — levels, rules, rewards, motivated players, etc. — are exemplified by our school system. The problem, he says, is that school has an engagement issue: people are bored.

Priebatsch explains that the under the grading system we’re all familiar with, there’s a constant possibility of failure. One bad day can drop you from an A to a B. This, Priebatsch says, is bad. “It’s a game mechanic, and it’s letting people lose in a game you don’t want them to lose”. His solution is a progression dynamic, where instead of being graded for each assignment and test individually, everyone starts at zero ‘experience points’ and then works their way up to higher levels.

His next topic was one that’s also familiar to both students and games alike: cheating. The disincentive for students isn’t on cheating itself — it’s on getting caught. Under the traditional system it’s the teacher versus the students, and the students work out ways to cheat without the teacher noticing. But there’s a different solution. At Princeton, exams are not monitored by a teacher or TA. You walk into the classroom, your test is on your desk, and there’s a box to turn it in. The only rules: you have to sign an honor code, and complicity is a crime — in other words, all of the students are supposed to watch out to make sure their peers aren’t cheating. This has dropped the number of cheating incidents at Princeton from 400 to 2 cases annually.

One of the more interesting topics Priebatsch covered were the faults currently seen in location-based games like SCVNGR, Foursquare, and Gowalla. In one telling pie chart, he showed just how few people, relatively speaking, are using these services (it’s a small slice of the pie). Priebatsch says that the big rule that these games have — users must be at a certain venue in order to check in — are too restrictive. They limit the number of people that can be engaged with, and the window of time that the service has to get the user’s attention.

Another issue: reward schedules. Priebatsch explains that rewards have been shown to be very effective, leading to spikes in engagement and activity. But it’s not a perfect system — handing out rewards can set users up to expect them everywhere. Without the reward as an incentive, people often stop checking in (he points to the Gap/Facebook deal as an example, and says that he believes many of the users who participated in that deal have stopped checking in).

Priebatsch closed out the talk with a demonstration of what he calls communal gameplay and communal discovery. Everyone in the keynote hall was given a colored card — there were a handful of different colors, and the cards were distributed at random. The audience was then asked to swap cards with their neighbors so that each row of seats was the same color. The audience was given 180 seconds to pull of the task, and they did it with a minute to spare.

The feat, Priebatsch says, is an analogy for how much people can get done with decentralized leadership, applying local solutions to global problems. And somehow — Priebatsch didn’t really get into giving any concrete predictions — the ‘game layer’ is going to help make this happen.

By now, even if you’re not at SXSW, you’re likely sick of SXSW. Why? Because every other damn tweet is about SXSW. I’m here, and tweeting about it, and I’m sick of it. But luckily Lanyrd has created the perfect extension.

Not at SXSW is an extension for both Chrome and Firefox that alters Twitter.com to remove all tweets that reference the conference. But that’s not good enough. So the extension also blocks tweets from all those Twitter users known to be attending SXSW!

It’s brilliant. It’s not perfect, but it’s close.

And it’s easy enough to turn the extension on and off from Twitter.com (just click on the new link at the top of your stream that shows you how many tweets are being hidden due to SXSWness). From here you can also decide to just hide tweets with the hashtag #sxsw or #sxswi and/or the known attendees.

And lest you think Lanyrd are just SXSW haters, they’re also the ones behind maybe the best (unofficial) SXSW guide for Austin. They’re just smart enough to realize that not everyone cares about the conference — or worse, that some people are forced to unfollow users to stop the influx of SXSW-related tweets.

Other startups have extensions to selectively block tweets from your stream — Slipstream is a great tool for this — but Lanyrd is built for one purpose alone: nuking tech/film/music hipsters.

You’re welcome.

photo © 2006 Liz Henry | more info (via: Wylio)Editor’s Note: René Pinnell is CEO and Co-Founder of Hurricane Party, a free iPhone app that makes it easy and fun to create spontaneous events with your friends. He has lived in Austin for the past 28 years, experiencing SXSW as a film director, tech entrepreneur, and music fan. His favorite moment at SXSW was in 2010 when Bill Murray poured shots behind the bar at Shangri-La.

Speculation as to which app will be the most used at SXSW this year is already well under way. No doubt, this is a question that is dominating any number of conversations among reporters, investors and start-ups, and is certainly a subject of increasing speculation here in Austin.

Let’s be clear: we do this every year before SXSW. But, this time the question would seem to hold an even greater level of importance. The difference this year is not which app or technology SXSW will help surface above the start-up noise, but rather which app will help SXSW take back control of the chaos it has unleashed.

The trouble with SXSW reached a tipping point last year. The interactive portion of the conference has grown so much that people are beginning to question its value, or at least what SXSW Interactive now stands for. As Jolie O’Dell pointedly critiqued: “Too many people, not enough tech.”

In fact, I think it’s safe to say everyone agrees that SXSW has gotten out of hand.

But, really, it’s not about the size, as Robert Scoble pointed out recently; It’s about the tools to properly manage it.

The Myths of SXSW

SXSW is not the real world (unless of course you consider thousands of nerds jumping up and down as Kevin Rose throws Apple gadgets into the Diggnation crowd, a normal thing).

The actual reality is that while SXSW may be some odd, fantastical microcosm that hints at possible mainstream success, the conference and how services perform here cannot be taken as any kind of barometer of scalable success.

Why? Because the pain points of SXSW are magnifications and exaggerations of the real world, rather than the other way around. SXSW is about scaling down rather than scaling up, which is precisely why every year we speculate on which service will be the one that everyone needs to use.

Twitter was successful in 2007 because so few people were using it. Those of us using it at the time were basically a small band of early adopters, who could follow and communicate with our equally geeky friends.

The same can be said for Gowalla and Foursquare. Disregarding last year’s “location wars,” both apps were actually fun and useful precisely because they hadn’t blown up yet. For example, I didn’t find out about the infamous “Revolving Door” party until the next morning because no one in my small network of friends knew to go to the Hilton and check-in. But for everyone there, this was a defining moment in their SXSW experience.

This is certainly no longer the case with Twitter, which has scaled to become almost entirely useless as an insider communication tool. Remember last year when Gary Vaynerchuk tweeted out the location of his wine party? Within minutes, hundreds of people lined up and Gary stormed out exasperated, in search of a larger venue to accommodate his followers.

So when Scoble declares that we need to create the “MicroSXSW experience,” he’s actually declaring what has always been true. The question is really which service will enable quality over quantity communications and organization this year. Which app will provide the backchannel for you to meaningfully engage with your social network in the real world?

Taking Back SXSW

The app that “wins” SXSW this year will excel at three things:

• Spontaneity – Help you to find, share and create plans on the fly.
• Exclusivity – Allow you to communicate and coordinate with a small group of friends.
• Serendipity – Open enough to reveal serendipitous opportunities and help you take advantage of them.

For example, let’s assume I see everyone talking about the Foodspotting Street Food Fest party on Twitter, so I head that way. A few seconds later, I get a push notification that a friend of mine has checked in there on Foursquare. Chances are I won’t be able to find him in the crowd, so I shoot him a text message to meet at the corner.

So far, so good. But, it has already taken me three different services to meet up with my friend, and there are still any number of barriers just getting there. After all, SXSW moves quickly, plans change, and you have to be able to improvise.

To have a legitimate conversation with my friend, we will likely need to ditch the overcrowded scene and find a quieter place to talk. And once we’ve decided on a spot, I’ll definitely want to round up some of my other friends to meet us.

This all sounds simple enough, and in the real world it may be. But we’ve already determined SXSW is not the real world. While we constantly ask ourselves if a service can scale up, what we’ve come to realize at SXSW is that a service must also be able to scale down.

Neither Twitter nor Foursquare hold the kind of value for users that they did when they garnered their SXSW acclaim. That is certainly not to say that they aren’t useful – only that their usefulness is no longer particularly attuned to the pain points of SXSW.

When I look back on my previous SXSW experiences, I remember the little moments – the 4:00am conversations over migas at Kerbey Lane, plotting new ventures in the Driskill bar, or watching the sunrise as we walked home to shower and do it all over again – these are the moments that define a successful experience at SXSW.

The app and technology that wins SXSW this year will be the same that wins every year – the one that provides the backchannel to achieve actual social value amid the insanity of SXSW.

This year, think small in a big way.

Editor’s Note: This is a guest post by Mark Suster (@msuster), a 2x entrepreneur, now VC at GRP Partners. Read more about Suster at Bothsidesofthetable

For the next four days if you’re in the tech industry you’re going to hear a non-stop stream of information about SXSW. It’s the time of year when many new startups are struggling to rise above all the noise and be heard. And when everybody is shouting it becomes overwhelming.

I’m actually in Austin at the moment. It turns out this is “the year of group messaging” and since I’m a shareholder in the largest player in the space, TextPlus (7.7m monthly actives), I thought I should come here to represent.

But … that’s all I have to say about that.

With all these companies vying for attention & others just here to soak up the vibe I thought I’d write a much broader piece on how startups can make the most of their attendance at any conference or event.

1. Be very targeted in which events you attend
Plan out your most important events to attend. You may choose some where your customers aggregate, others where you hope to find biz dev partners & still others where you want to meet investors. Many startups get caught up in the conference circuit. They have fun & meet tons of interesting people and they confuse this with the need to do be at every major tech event. I call them “conference ho’s” – don’t be one. While conferences can be intoxicating they can also be very unfocused, narcissistic and hurt your team back in the office.

Choose wisely. Don’t worry about all the folks bragging on Twitter, Instagram or FourSquare about being at the latest event. Feel good in knowing that while they’re at the latest conference, you can be back home stealing all their customers!

2. Do leg work before you get to the event
The most impact you’ll have at conferences is when you plan meetings before you go. I know it sounds obvious but trust me most people don’t do this. It’s very easy to get a sense of who will be attending an event before you go. Don’t assume that you’ll fortuitously run into potential customers or biz dev partners. Write them in advance and request meetings.

The most experienced conference goers (bigger company ones) often book suites in hotels and plan meetings rather than attending any actual sessions. The single most important thing about a conference in my opinion is the fact that all of your important contacts are in one physical location. Don’t leave it to chance. Book ‘em.

3. If you sit on a panel, make sure you don’t suck
I’m not a big fan of panels. But not everybody has yet earned the right to do keynotes and the truth is that there are some good benefits of sitting on the right panels. I wrote a full post on how to be effective on a panel. Educate your audience on a topic, don’t be a blowhard overly promoting your company. You’ll get way more from an audience respecting your insights and contributions. They’ll want to meet you later. Remember that most panels are painfully boring & those panelists who entertain people will be the most remembered.

Have a dialog with your fellow panelists. Don’t be afraid of some friendly controversy – it adds spice. Just be polite about it. And don’t be a panel hog – you might get to say more to the audience but if you care about your fellow panelists you’ll piss them off. I actually think one of the most misunderstood reasons to be on a panel is actually getting to know the other panelists rather than just talking to the audience. You have a certain bond after you’ve sat on a panel together.  So don’t piss them off by hogging minutes for an audience that won’t remember you 5 minutes after you’re done. Grab business cards of the other panelists and follow up after the show.

4. Focus more on Lobby Conf than watching panels
Speaking of panels, don’t sit through them all. If you have a few topics you really want to hear – plan them in advance. But the truth is that nothing truly interesting is really ever said on a panel. People are too guarded – they know they’re under the spotlight. So you won’t REALLY learn anything new.

I spend 90+% of my time at conferences in the lobby and I always have. Yes, it’s partly due to ADHD. But really you want to be building connections with people. While the conference is going on there are always people outside the rooms in the lobby. That’s your best chance to get people that would ordinarily be really difficult to get a meeting with.

5. Consider staying out late, sleeping in
I’ve been to many of the TechCrunch 50, Disrupt and many similar events over the years. The most valuable time for me personally was at the W Hotel after the event. I showed up around 10pm and hung out with a bunch of people I hardly ever get to spend time with. There was no artificial table between us, we weren’t scurrying between one meeting to the next. We didn’t have any documents due that night. We just hung. And when you’re out socially with other people you form a tighter bond. Just is.

If you gave me a choice between the late night cocktail and the morning keynote I’d be sipping martinis every time.

6. Schedule dinners
The other secret conference trick that is orchestrated by the true zen masters is to schedule a dinner and invite other people. It’s a great way to get to know people intimately. Start by booking a few easy-to-land friends who are interesting. Work hard to bag a “brand name” person who others will want to meet. All it takes is one. Then the rest of your invites can mention that person’s name on the guest list (name others, too … obviously) and you will be able to draw in some other people you’d like to meet.

Another similar strategy is with customers. If you invite 3-4 customers and 3-4 prospects to a dinner with 2-3 employees and some other interesting guests you’ll be doing well. Potential customers always prefer to talk to existing reference customers than to talk to just your sales reps.

Final tip, sometimes a dinner can be too expensive for an early-stage company yet picking a killer venue is one of the best ways to bagsy high-profile people. Everybody loves to eat somewhere hot. So why not go in on the dinner with two other companies. That way you’re all extending your networks and splitting the costs.

Plan dinner early enough that people can still get out afterward and do other events that may be going on.

7. Don’t get too wasted
I’m not being moralistic here. I like a drink as much as the next guy and have had my share of hammerhead nights. But an important conference is not the place to do this (except maybe SXSW from what I hear). For starters you’re obviously bound to do stupid things when you knock too many back. And trust me there’s always the people who don’t drink very much and when you come into contact with them you won’t represent yourself as well as you’d like.

Save the boozy nights for back home. Or save it for the after party with your closest colleagues. But if you want to maximize your conference experience lay off the last few drinks. Oh, and don’t do crazy man dancing at the party. I see that often. It’s embarrassing. Worse than wedding dancing. You know who I’m talking about.

8. Don’t assume everybody remembers you
When you walk up to somebody who you’ve met before always start by re-introducing yourself (unless you know them really well). Of course they’ll probably remember you, but often you forget the context of how you know somebody so without that slight prompt the connection isn’t made. I wrote a detailed post on how to re-intro yourself properly.

9. Get a wing man
Some people are great at schmoozing – even when they don’t know anybody else. You know the type – naturally charming and conversationalists. Well, that’s not most people. I often suggest that people get a wing man. Get somebody that roams around the conference with you. It’s far easier to meet people when there are two of you together (just like it’s easier when you’re at a bar trying to meet people when you’re single).

Don’t confuse this for just talking with your buddy for the whole event. That’s dumb. You’re there to network and connect with new people. Just use them as an effective way to hunt in packs.

10. Close the loop after the show
I’d estimate that less than 10% of people follow up after conferences. And those 10% all probably all sales people. You grabbed all those business cards for a reason. Take the highest priority ones and write them a short note within 3 days of the conference ending. In the email write something that will remind them who you are. Find something unique to say so they’ll remember you. If it’s not too forward you can even try for a follow-on action – perhaps getting together next time you’re in town. Obviously only request this where it seems appropriate. But no follow-up = wasted meeting in the first place. Shame.

Now after all this, don’t you feel better about not being in Austin?

Foursquare has been all over promotions and marketing campaigns at this year’s SXSW in Austin, Texas. For the interactive portion of the conference, the startup partnered with Big Boi, giving fans a chance to win free concert tickets. For the upcoming SXSW Music conference, taking place on March 16th-20th, Foursquare has teamed up with RCRD LBL, a sweet website that serves up daily free music downloads, to give music fans a leg up in the musical mayhem.

To participate, follow RCRD LBL’s Foursquare page and check-in to RCRD LBL-approved venues during Austin’s SXSW Music conference. Users will receive information about the shows, as well as free music downloads from select artists performing at each event. Users who check-in to at least five of RCRD LBL’s key venues will be automatically entered to win an iPad 2.

“I am very excited about RCRD LBL’s partnership with Foursquare, as it allows us to deliver the hottest free music downloads in a fresh format. It offers a new and unique way for consumers to discover music via a location-based social experience.”

-Josh Deutsch, RCRD LBL Chairman

Check out the full details of RCRD LBL shows here.