The 2005 festival, for instance, featured keynotes from Malcolm Gladwell, Wonkette blogger Ana Marie Cox, and science-fiction author Bruce Sterling. For Web 2.0, “South By” represented what Burning Man did for an earlier generation of geeks. It helped to constitute a social world, providing an annual touchstone for people to reconnect and revive their passion for technology. It allowed hard-working geeks to blow off steam and eat barbeque in the sun while nattering about RSS feeds and trading business cards. SXSW could kickstart careers; Twitter broke into the mainstream during SXSW 2007 and Foursquare was launched there in 2009.

Alice E. Marwick, Status Update, loc. 155