When you're down at SXSWi zipping to and from different venues, what's the best way to stay in touch with your friends? This year, it's not phone, IM or email, it's Twitter.
I was just talking to Laughing Squid's Scott Beale, an avid Twitter fan, and he tells me that he's seen tons people signing up for Twitter within the last couple of weeks as the conference drew closer. He also says that everyone's using it to meet up at SXSW. He says he and his group of friends used Twitter to find each other last night when most of them arrived. Use of the update service is getting so huge that Scoble thinks SXSW is going to break it.
Twitter is playing along, too – the company has set up HD plasma screens in the Austin Convention Center to display messages sent out to the SXSW group. Instructions on how to join the group are on the Twitter blog. You should also read Scott's blog post about Twitter and Splashcast at SXSW.
From the looks of it, all of this year's Barcamp attendees are trying to find each other on Twitter right now.
If you're new to Twitter, here's the help page to give you the details. And contrary to popular belief, it's not just for SMS. You can Twitter over AIM and through the browser, too. If you're on a Mac, there's Twitteriffic, an easy and nice-looking desktop client.
I'm not at the conference (Scott G. is representin') but I'm on Twitter – find me.
