The South By Southwest festival in Austin Texas has become the Launchpad for startups over the last few years with it's unique ability to take a company from unknown to the next hot thing over the course of a few days.
With its multitude of events spread out across the city, it provides a unique scaling exercise for any startup focused on real time communication and location. The most notable of the companies to experience the success of this conference are Twitter and Foursquare but since then others have had similar success.
If you have read any article leading up to Friday's start then you already know that the driving theme of this year's conference is group-messaging apps. New start-ups like Groupme, Beluga, Fast Society and Eightbit are looking to unseat big players like foursquare and Twitter as the Go to app.
While I think that space has quickly become overcrowded, I also think that the key thing here that people may be missing is that this conference is also showing that the mobile web is the future. The common denominator for all of these apps is that almost all of their activity will take place on a mobile device. Their level of success will actually depend on it. Gone are the days where people keep laptops open while they sit in conference sessions. Smart phones and tablets will now replace them. (Given the iPad 2 launch this Friday I'd be curious to know how many devices will be purchased in the Austin area this weekend)
The mobile web is taking center stage and I actually believe can truly be considered mainstream. This will continue to evolve as we do things like share private moments with products like Path and aspiring business owners continue to increasingly sell their wares anywhere with products like Square and many other products enter and change different aspects our lives. The mobile device will continue to be the epicenter of this activity as we move into the future. But based on what's about to happen at SXSW, the future is NOW