The most crowded of all of the sessions at South by Southwest this year was Mashable's interview of the Foursquare CEO. Or as they say on Twitter:
@foursquare's @dens & @mashable's @petecashmore together at @SXSW
This highly anticipated panel brought two of the most well known names in emerging-tech, Pete Cashmore and Dennis Crowley, together and onto the same stage. The pair discussed some of the Foursquare 3.0 features, like the Explore tab and a refactored display of Special Offers. Foursquare's 3.0 update was unveiled to users in a well-timed app-store debut just two days before South by Southwest's Interactive conference began. Aside from the 3.0 intro, other high-points of the conversation included the newly formed Amex partnership, and Crowley's reveal that in the next 12-18 months he envisions that tapping phones (using NFC at the time of purchase in store) will be the Location-Based Services mechanic which ultimately overcomes the check-in cheating problem.
Much of the interview was done FamilyFeud-style; a tactic intended to pay complement to Dennis and the Crowley family's actual appearance and three-show win on CBS's Family Feud Game. Of the 50 SXSW attendees surveyed, the majority of them think that Crowley is worth somewhere near $100,000,000. This however made Crowley literally Laugh Out Loud, and he and Cashmore attempted to educate the audience on the misunderstood lucrative-ness of running a young startup. The Mashable CEO also crowned the Foursquare Founder with a literal mayor's crown as he declared him the Mayor of SXSW. There was also some light-hearted joking about the Gap ad which also featured co-founder, Naveen Selvadurai.
So what's next with Fourquare? Here's Dennis Crowley's take:
"Your phone knows where you are, how fast you're walking, how long you've been sitting in one place. 'Hey, Dennis is in the airport right now, sitting bored, what should he do in the next 15 minutes?' Foursquare should ping me and say 'Hey, you should check this out. This is the coffee shop that Alice always talks about that you've never seen before' or 'We know that you're in Austin for 4 days. These are the 5 things that you must do based on all the things you've done and all the things your friends have done.'"
Looking forward to it, @dens. Thanks for the update. We love the 3.0 updates.
Check out the hashtags #sxsw and #checkins for some of the realtime chatter during this entertaining SXSW Keynote.