The myth of SXSW Interactive is that both Twitter and Foursquare exploded onto the Web 2.0 scene – the reality when you look at the services and when they were adopted by many is a little different. Still, the mantra is there, and that means many will be looking to Austin for the next big thing in mobile.

Kim-Mai Cutler doesn’t think we’ll find one.

But the reality is a bit more complex. From Facebook’s beginnings up until the IPO last year, the most hyped consumer startups like Twitter, Pinterest and Tumblr a) tapped into people’s vanity or need for self-expression and b) leaned toward advertising.

The apps that I’ve stuck to in the last year like Zimride’s Lyft, Uber, etc. a) actually rely on users paying for goods or services (not advertising!) b) match supply and demand in two-sided markets in real-time and c) can pay for growth once they nail their lifetime value.

The key with these models is highly controlled growth. Startups like Lyft and Sidecar are limited by the number of quality drivers they can hire. Exec is only expanding to cities out of SF now that the company feels confident that it can maintain the user experience while scaling the supply-side remotely. These companies grow carefully, city by city and country by country.

Not by betting the farm on one big splashy SXSW launch.

Read on at TechCrunch.

I’ve been moonlighting over at Forbes for a while, but when my article on five companies that could ‘win’ at SXSW Interactive went live, well, I couldn’t not post it here.

Why have I chosen Eventbrite, Glancee, Highlig.ht, Lanyrd, and Pinwheel? You’ll need to read on at Forbes to find out

Normally the “which app is going to win SXSW” is going to try and make a lot of noise at interactive, but from what we can see here at The Baby! SixSaw isn’t going to go live until Music starts – which gives it a different audience to the Silicon valley on Holiday crowd, and a competitive field with far less products and services pushing to get onto Southby’ers handsets.

So watch out for SixSaw, which mixes up the smartphone’s ability to capture memories and moments, with a competitive bingo style game, all tied into a community of players challenging each other and watching their relative scores move around.

A quick and easy idea to play, and one that could go down well with the Austin crowds. Why they’re waiting till after Interactive I’m not sure but if it’s a considered move, it’s certainly a ballsy one.

SixSaw really really mean it when they say the name is about the six things you saw to win the game.. S (i) XS (a) W is probably a co-incidence.

Sign up www.sixsaw.com

Long time SXSW Interactive fans will remember Hugh MacLeod’s artwork gracing the swag bag. Since then the Texas based Scottish artist has gone from strength to strength, and when his latest artwork hit The Baby’s email box, we kinda regret not having a physical office to buy a print and hang it up.

There’s something special about Austin, a special confluence of factors (climate, quality of life, hippie-meets-music-meets-cowboy-meets-high-tech-meets-barbecue-meets-Mexican-food) that makes it one of the most spectacularly livable cities in the Western world. I wanted to create a cartoon that gave justice to that idea, an idea that the geeks would understand.

Austin is the Killer App

Prints can be ordered direct from Hugh over at Gaping Void.

On reflection, SXSW Interactive didn’t manage to bring us any new Killer Apps this year, although it did provide an app store category of useful one. I did try with “Is Scoble in this Room” (which is still live and proving useful, he’s currently 8144km from me), but the smart thinking was that one of the Group Messaging solutions had the best chance to get traction. Or if you were Beluga, get the hype and be sold to Facebook before SXSW actually started.

A few months later, what does the Group Messaging space look like? Read Write Web have taken a look at how it’s turned away from some plucky start-ups to a battle between Google and Facebook (with a dash of Microsoft in the mix as well):

Group messaging threatened to become a breakout activity at SXSW, as tweeting and ‘checking in’ had done at previous SXSW events. It didn’t quite pan out that way, partly because a giant (Facebook) acquired one of the leading scrappy startups before things got interesting. Also, there were minor but irritating glitches with the apps. A few months on and group messaging is no longer as hyped as it was at SXSW. Yet it’s more than ever a key feature in the social and mobile products of Google, Facebook and Microsoft.

What were your experiences in March, and now? Is this still the next big thing or are you happy with adding multiple numbers to outgoing SMS messages?

Every year, there’s always someone trying to be the next Twitter at SXSW – which forgets two important facts. The first is that Twitter had three years of being “the big thing that came out of SXSW”, and the second is that any project that comes from an Alumni of SXSW Baby! (in this case Ev WIlliams) gets a Hall Pass from us.

But the question on this year’s overnight success at SXSW Interactive is already in the air. While getting Austin all excited is no guarantee of a hit, it will get you noticed in the Tech Press. As Marin Prez puts it “…at this time last year, Foursquare was the darling of the tech press, especially at industry wankfests like SXSW.”

Can we decide who’ll be the biscuit this year?

Louis Gray says it’s going to be Beluga, a group-texting solution for Android and iOS devices that allows group management and file attachment – arguably a function that phones can already do but that centralised list management for replies could be key. It’s a nice solution for a fixed group of people, but it seems to lack the ad-hoc nature of social groups that makes SXSW so special.

#Hashable is another service frequently mentioned, such as on this Quora thread on “what apps will be most used at SXSW?” Again it’s a mobile application, but rather than helping you talk to people you know, it’s all about managing people you have just met. Ready to shout about who you have just met on a public internet channel? TO help build up a dynamic relationship book? This might need a bit more push to get the Austin Mojo building up around it. Currently in private (invite) beta, expect this to go “live” by the time the New York team reach Texas.

Anyone spot a winner yet? Nor us! To be honest we here at Baby! have no idea what could come out on top (although I’d argue my Filofax coupled with some Text Messages beats anything), but what do you think?