Okay, so Austin isn’t really the “birthplace” of Twitter, but it was at the South-by-Southwest (SXSW) tech conference two years ago that Twitter was introduced to the technorati in a big way.
I recall reading blogger and anthropologist danah boyd’s posts about her frustration with the system (she had set her cell phone to receive every tweet from her hundreds-strong network — in real time). She later that year mused about its uses in a public conversation that first persuaded me to tinker with Twitter.
Now it’s two years later, and time again for SXSW to light up Austin. But this year Twitter, and social media in general, are far more mainstream. Pepsico is cashing in. Check out this tool for reporting on tech tweets from Texas!