Austin, Texas | March 9 - 13, 2012
TechCrunch TV talked to Path co-founder and CEO Dave Morin last week while we were at the South By Southwest Interactive conference in Austin, Texas. It’s always interesting to talk to Morin, who is widely regarded as one of the most well-connected and in-the-know entrepreneurs in today’s web startup landscape.
In this interview, Morin discussed the latest update to the Path app, version 2.1… → Read More
What kind of tech startup can be built over four days, while riding across the country on a bumpy bus with somewhat dodgy Wi-Fi? The people who took the StartupBus to Austin, Texas for the South By Southwest Interactive conference found out. The StartupBus had its biggest year ever this year, with busloads of hacker-entrepreneurs from 11 regions in North America coding their way down to SxSWi with… → Read More
Highlight is one of the most talked about apps out there. It was touted to be the breakout app at this year’s SXSW. But it wasn’t. In fact, almost everyone I’ve talked to who used it ended up turning it off or uninstalling it.
(The same probably goes for Glancee, Sonar, etc.. but I only really tried and talked about Highlight.)
I’ve had many discussions about the app and most have… → Read More
Every year, before, during, and after South by Southwest, everyone’s eager declare someone the winner of the conference. Then comes the inevitable backlash, with questions about whether Popular App X will ever catch on with “regular people” — or if it’s just useful to techies who are constantly checking their iPhones in search of the next party.
For the second year in a row, mobile Q&A… → Read More
Earlier this week, TechCrunch TV hosted a live show from the floor of the convention center at the South By Southwest Interactive conference in Austin, Texas and we were really pleased to have technology evangelist and early-stage startup hunter Robert Scoble as a guest.
Watch the video above to hear Scoble’s thoughts on how SxSWi has grown over the past decade from a few “geeks off in the… → Read More
The last time TechCrunch checked in with Brittany Morin was in mid-November 2011, when the former Googler had just debuted her own lifestyle brand, Brit Media, aimed at positioning herself as the “Martha Stewart of Silicon Valley.” So TechCrunch TV caught up with her earlier this week in Austin, Texas at the South By Southwest Interactive conference to find out how things have been shaping up… → Read More
Some people are surprised when they find out that Getty Images is just 17 years old — its brand name has become such an institution in the image licensing and stock photography space that many people assume it’s been around for decades longer. But starting in 1995 just at the dawn of the Internet age does make it a veteran in many ways, compared to its much younger peers in the web photo space. → Read More
We sort of saw this coming, given the fact that Ben Silbermann said so at SXSW, but Pinterest has just revamped its profile pages. Those of you familiar with the hottest new social network will know that profile pages originally displayed all of your boards, their titles, with thumbnails of each pin in every board. It got the job done to be sure, but was also pretty simple.
Today, all that… → Read More
Twitter has been working hard over the last year to make photo sharing a core part of its product, taking over the photo-hosting role from third parties and gaining deep new integration with Apple’s iOS. But there’s also a big new winner coming up on top of its developer platform — mobile photo-sharing app Instagram.
New stats provided to us by social photo aggregator Pixable show how this… → Read More
TaskRabbit, the online marketplace that lets people outsource small tasks and errands to others for negotiated fees, expanded operations into Austin, Texas this past week just in time for the South By Southwest Interactive conference. Now that the Austin launch is out of the way, founder Leah Busque told TechCrunch TV, going forward TaskRabbit will work on deepening its reach in Seattle and… → Read More
As South by Southwest transforms from a massive tech party to a massive music festival, Twitter has unveiled Twitter for Musicians and Artists, a page offering tips on how musicians can use the service to connect with their fans.
Even if you’re not a world-famous musician, many of the suggestions will be pretty familiar. (Use hashtags! Reply to your fans!) Perhaps the most interesting thing… → Read More
MTV is handing musicians the new keys to a new website called Artists.MTV.
Van Toffler, president of Viacom’s Music Group, was scheduled to announce the initiative during his speech at South by Southwest this afternoon. Beforehand, I got on the phone with VP of Digital Music Strategy Shannon Connolly to talk about MTV’s plans. She said Artists.MTV comes out of a larger discussion about the role… → Read More
Even in an election year where Republicans and Democrats are at each others’ throats even more than usual, there is still one political issue in the United States that both sides have to get behind in order to stay in voters’ good graces: Job creation. And since so many jobs these days are created by startups and small businesses, a number of politicians have started championing initiatives to… → Read More
It’s pretty easy to write yet another post about who “won” SXSW or, if you’re feeling ornery or ambitious, how there are no longer any breakout stars. But there’s an important point lost in this repetitive debate.
SXSW is good at producing cultural phenomena — think apps that take off among a critical mass of digerati, who then fly home and spread these products to other parts of the country… → Read More
Trey Ratcliff, the travel photographer known for popularizing HDR (high dynamic range) photo techniques online through his very popular Stuck In Customs blog and more recently his own apps and Google+ page, hosted a photowalk in his hometown of Austin, Texas this week during the South By Southwest Interactive conference. Watch him talk to TechCrunch TV about his one piece of advice for casual… → Read More
Karma, the gift-giving app made by the founders of TapJoy, made its official debut just two weeks ago. But with $5 million in funding from Sequoia Capital, Kleiner Perkins and others, Karma has clearly caught the attention of some important people. So we caught up with co-founder and CEO Lee Linden this week to get a demo and see what all the hype is about. → Read More
Looking for a band for your tech conference, wedding, or launch party? San Francisco startup Hear It Local has just launched a private concert booking and crowdfunding platform that connects you to local musicians, just in time to catch the attention of the music crowd at South By Southwest. Smaller venues can also use Hear It Local to fill their calendars with great affordable bands.
Unique… → Read More
Here is the second half of our two-part interview with legendary inventor and thought leader Ray Kurzweil (you can see part one here.) Here, Kurzweil discusses why sleep is so important for technological innovation (but it’s OK to party and program all night once in a while), why facts are better off on Wikipedia than being drilled into students’ brains, the latest bit of research with which he’s… → Read More
As South by Southwest Interactive is ending and the music festival is begins, there’s a new app offering a fans a chance to explore Austin’s musical history.
The app is called ACL Archive, and it comes from Austin City Limits, the public television show that first started in 1976 to showcase live performances. I was actually a fan of the show when I was a teenager — or, as I told general… → Read More
Just in time for SXSW Music, Facebook has updated its Events interface. Admins can now create an event with less details, receive suggestions of who to invite and notifications when invitees confirm, and a more advanced wall lets invitees ask questions and more discretely decline invitations. The revamp could help persuade users to create an event rather than just inviting friends to a… → Read More
It was bound to happen sooner or later, but it looks like all the heated conversation we’ve seen over user privacy in mobile apps has now finally boiled over into a class action lawsuit, filed this week in the Western Division of the U.S. District Court, Austin Division.
A list of 13 plaintiffs, acting “on behalf of themselves and all others similarly situated,” have filed a suit against… → Read More
Somewhere off in the future, there will be a mobile app that shows you all of the nearby people who you might find interesting — without you having to click a single button to check in. But we’re not there yet, as thousands of South By Southwest attendees have been discovering over the last few days.
New background location apps like Highlight and Glancee have certainly been trying hard. As… → Read More
“How you build the future is you motivate people to pay attention and act, to improve their circumstances and run their own lives”, LinkedIn co-founder and philanthropist Reid Hoffman tells me. That’s why his support of microlending platform Kiva’s kiva.org/free program has a double positive impact. He put up $1 million so 40,000 people could try helping the impoverished via microfinance… → Read More
Keith Teare, co-founder of TechCrunch and partner at incubator Archimedes Labs, isn’t thinking small when it comes to his new project Just.me — he says that it’s “asking and answering the question of what would happen if the phone was upgraded to be truly social.”
The app hasn’t launched yet, but Teare previewed it today at the South by Southwest Startup Accelerator, and I got a few more… → Read More
Whatever you think about Dropbox‘s place in the future of communication, the company has been on a roll this year. Following up on a big redesign last week, which cleaned up navigation, search, and photos, chief executive Drew Houston got on stage last night at South By Southwest to talk about its early days, and where it’s going next.
First, the newsy bits. The company was profitable last… → Read More
You might not often connect Al Gore and Sean Parker, but the pair took the stage together this afternoon at South by Southwest, and they made similar points — that the democratic system has been broken by a flood of special interest money, and that the Internet could be the way to fix it.
“To the extent that these new mediums and new media are going to have a role in reforming politics, it’s… → Read More
Academy Award winning actor Forest Whitaker was at SXSW this past weekend, where his JuntoBox Films studio — which combines crowdsourcing social media technology with traditional film production — announced it has greenlit its first movie. Watch his interview with TechCrunch TV to see him discuss how technology is democratizing the filmmaking process, how Hollywood is slowly getting over its… → Read More
Legendary scientist, inventor, futurist, and all-around tech icon Ray Kurzweil is attending the ongoing South By Southwest Interactive conference for the first time ever this year, and TechCrunch TV was very excited to be able to sit down with him for an interview. In this first half of our talk, watch Kurzweil discuss why we need more young entrepreneurs, how today’s consumer app landscape proves… → Read More
From the floor of the Austin Convention Center, TechCrunch TV is live with all the latest news from SXSW. Find out what TechCrunch writers have to say about their favorite apps, events, and surprises. TCTV’s Colleen Taylor leads a roundtable with our TechCrunch writers. There was huge pre-show buzz for the app, Highlight. We’ll talk to the Founder Paul Davison and about whether it lived up to… → Read More
BandPage, Facebook’s top app for artists trying to stream and promote their music to fans, now powers 500,000 musician Pages. Just 6 months ago that number was 250,000, showing the rapid shift in focus of bands from MySpace and standalone websites to Facebook where fan retention is better. BandPage also just announced new features that allow listeners to tell friends about favorite songs through… → Read More
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