Fun with social media and SXSW

I am not going to South by Southwest (SXSW) this year. I have no clients going to SXSW this year (although I do have one client who recommends Elliott BROOD ...SXSW at The Legendary Continental Club on March 19).

I don't have much time to get distracted during the work day. I have an account with Filtrbox. I kind of geek out on PR.

So mixing these facts together today, here is a poorly thought out effort to oversimplify and track the social media buzz coming out of SXSW 2010.

If you need two opposing perspectives to get up to speed on SXSW:

- The fun: USA Today writes on GM/Chevy's "Amazing Race 2.0" leading up to SXSW

- The skeptic: Paul Carr from TechCrunch offers this advice "(SXSW) sucked last year, and it’s going to suck again this year. You’re kidding yourself if you think otherwise."

So before I go back to work, I did quick searches for big brands and sxsw and put these into social media search tool FiltrBox. I did this on Thursday, March 11 around 3 in the afternoon MT (Filtrbox only tracks mentions after I start a search - it does not track any mentions before that time). Filtrbox can give suspect results sometimes (especially when I move fast - plenty of room for my own user error) and they say they are going offline all weekend. Still will be fun to check in and see how various brands are faring.

Editor's note: With all due respect to Jon Swartz who wrote the USA Today story above, I noticed GM/Chevy's SXSW program a few days ago from a Tweet from Tammy Camp (@tammycamp on Twitter) and a nice follow up Tweet from one of GM's social media guys Christopher Barger (@cbarger). I've added #chevysxsw and #sxswsf, Tammy's team Amazing Race Team, to my tracking.