For better or worse, the just-concluded SXSW Interactive festival in Austin, Texas carries the weight of massive geek expectations. The big reason has to do with Twitter: it was at SXSWi in 2007 that the now-ubiquitous messaging service first gained wide exposure. The buzz from Austin traveled far and wide throughout the blogosphere and, up in Washington, I was inspired to join Twitter three years ago yesterday. The rest is history.

Each subsequent year, the question buzzing around the Austin Convention Center has been the same: “What’s the new Twitter? What’s the new big thing?” With a few years’ distance, it’s clear that the rise of Twitter is sui generis, like the blogosphere itself. SXSW is a great launching pad for new services (here’s one from this year called Lunch.com), but no law of the universe dictates that every March in Central Texas, something new and wonderful will take world by storm.

And a funny thing happened this year: I don’t recall anybody asking about the next big thing. I think I know the reason, and it is not that there wasn’t something to talk about. It’s that the next big thing was obvious from the first day.

Read the whole thing at: At SXSW, Last Year’s Next Big Thing Was This Year’s Actual Big Thing.

Apart from the auto-launching pre-roll ad—I tried and failed to pull this off DVR myself—not too shabby: I got two sound bites, the final conclusion restated in the reporter’s words, and some hilarious B-roll which is clearly the two of us shooting B-roll. Enjoy.

One of the more interesting projects I’ve been working on related to 3121 is the social advertising, which we launched last week concurrent with this blog. In fact, there is a chance that you are reading this blog post now after having clicked on one of these ads. And if you arrived here from Facebook or LinkedIn, then I all but guarantee it. And I know for a fact that you work on Capitol Hill.

In some ways, advertising on social networks is not much different than traditional online advertising: the creative (yes, that’s a noun) consists of text and a graphic, with a link to the page you want people to visit. But they can also identify key demographics with a much greater degree of accuracy than even Google’s Adwords (which we are also using). Members of Facebook and LinkedIn supply their own demographic information, which is great for finding just the people you want and only the people you want.

Want to reach single female college students in Boston, Massachusetts who are fans of Gossip Girl? Facebook counts more than 1,600. How about married thirtysomething men in Portland, Oregon who are fans of The Big Lebowski? More than 600 of them. The possibilities are endless.

In your case, if you do fit the Capitol Hill profile, you probably saw one of the two following ads:

As you may have guessed, Facebook also lets one zero in on just employees of the United States Congress. (How many? At least 7,500.) LinkedIn has a different system but one which is very similar: identify people who work in legislative offices, set that to Washington, DC and we hope you’re someone who is interested in 3121.

If Twitter doesn’t turn out to be just the latest political fad (like, say, psychographic polling, or Ron Paul), then it just may be the worst thing to happen to politics and its attending media since a couple of geniuses at CNN dreamed up “Crossfire” back in the 1980s. It’s not that Twitter doesn’t have a value to society. Its ability to spread news (as in the emergency landing of a plane in the Hudson River) or to circumvent repression (as in Moldovan youths organizing protests) has already proved transformative. But not every new mode of communication lends itself to politics, where speed and complexity rarely coexist. The capital might be a better place if it became a Twitter-free zone, a city where people spent more time talking to the guy serving the coffee and less time informing the world that the coffee had, in fact, been served.

This is in the right ballpark, but it’s still a foul ball. For one thing, as I’ve explained before, the Moldovan protests were not principally organized on Twitter, yet Bai’s mention here indicates it is likely to become a popular media myth for some time to come.

And though Blog P.I. has been recently accused of engaging in Twitter triumphalism, I’ve also made the point that Twitter is best as a way to create and communicate the existence of connections between messages and ideas rather than to communicate complete thoughts — “more medium than message,” as I’ve put it.

It’s not that Twitter does not “lend itself to politics”; it’s that Twitter does not lend itself to explanations of concepts or, typically, careful debate about such issues. Bai notes that Twitter is good for its ability to spread news, but this hyperconnectivity has as many implications as there are kinds of information that can be tweeted.

Here I must clarify my statement that Twitter is not ideal for debate, because I have seen it work. Not quite a year ago, Personal Democracy Forum co-sponsored a Twitter debate between representatives from the Obama and McCain campaigns (including my future NMS colleague Liz Mair). And sometime last year — I can’t quite seem to locate it — I watched a fascinating debate about gay marriage between Michael Turk and Gregory Cole. Just this past week, Evan McMorris-Santoro at The Hotline conducted a “Twitterview” with ex-DNC chairman/VA governor candidate Terry McAuliffe. McAuliffe’s replies were necessarily curtailed and so not terrifically informative, but there’s something unique about holding this kind of interview in a public setting, where anyone can comment on the discussion, even as it is occurring.

Twitter Search is necessary but not sufficient for presenting the full scope of discussion for readers arriving after the live event. Better tools for organizing and displaying these conversations on blogs are needed, and I wouldn’t be surprised if this is where the Twitter API is headed next. Already there are editorial services like McMorris-Santoro’s Word on the Tweet and Danny Glover’s Hill Tweet News. Another interesting question is whether 140-character tweets are too short to be made sense of by mostly algorithm-driven aggregators like Gabe Rivera’s Memeorandum (and Techmeme). Hashtags combined with Slashdot-style meta moderation may be key to making such a service realistically work.

The point here is that it can. Bai and others see Twitter’s 140-character limitation without giving consideration to the unlimited possibilities for development of the platform. And here I’ll risk borrowing from one of the hoariest clichés in business and technology to say: you have to think outside the tweet.

Given the choice between “Crossfire” and Twitter, I know which one I’d pick.

N.B. I will say this for Matt Bai: at least he made an honest effort to understand Twitter for what it is, unlike this inane interview/column by (who else but) Maureen Dowd, wherein Twitter’s Biz Stone comes off a thoughtful fellow under MoDo’s faux-withering interrogation. If you subject yourself to reading it, I recommend as antidote Nancy Friedman’s parody, “Ms. Dowd Interviews the Inventor of the Telephone.”

“Everyone looks at the numbers and says, ‘Wow, advertising is growing 20 percent a year online,’ and they get really excited about that,” he said. “But most of that growth is cost-per-click — it’s Google, it’s AdWords, it’s AdSense. So display advertising stopped growing a year ago, and the problem is the number of impressions online doubles roughly every year, and so you have this gigantic overhang of supply, and demand has not only stopped growing anyway but is also definitely down in a commercial sense. Put it all together and it’s kind of a perfect storm.”

I asked him whether the Democratic administration and the billions of dollars in increased government spending were providing any new markets for ad buys. He wouldn’t discuss the specifics but confirmed that they were seeing some strong pockets of interests in affected industries and interest groups.

The closing of Pajamas Media, Copeland said, was definitely good for Blogads. When the conservative network launched, it managed to swipe several major conservative bloggers, leaving only a handful of the larger ones behind. Copeland told me that, starting in April, conservative blogger Michelle Malkin will be returning to Blogads.

Indeed michellemalkin.com is back from Pajamas Media. Of two display slots on her site, one ad is running in the $450/week slot, though the $1,500 premium slot remains unfilled. However, this pattern could be seen long before the recession hit, and it’s always been my suspicion that the premium account is meant to sticker-shock buyers into believing the lower slot a bargain, while making the occasional big score from a flush-with-cash advertiser buying out the category.

I digress.

The Malkin-owned Hot Air however is not coming back to Blogads, not yet if at all. That site is running Google display ads as well as ads from Intermarkets, which handles Drudge Report and a few other political sites with less-Niagaran traffic.

Also quoted in Owens’ column is Chris Bowers of Open Left, who also goes through Blogads. Here’s what ad column on his site looked like on Friday:

I say that because as of Saturday afternoon, they’ve thrown a display ad that wasn’t in there before. Those displays can’t be bringing in a great deal of money. I’ll bet more than anything they’re running just to keep up the appearance of healthy advertising, and hopefully lure other advertisers into the column.

Meanwhile back on Bowers’ former site, MyDD, Jerome Armstrong is keeping the lights on with Google ads, Jane Hamsher’s CommonSense Media and something I’ve never heard of called Pulse 360 that nonetheless has an impressive network. Its Blogads slot remains on the site, unfilled. Two years ago, that would have been unthinkable. At Daily Kos, long one of Blogads’ top earners, Markos Moulitsas has had a diversified pool of ads for some time; today premium Blogads slot is unfilled, one flash-based display ad occupies the (almost-identically placed) lower slot, and just one traditional Blogad (JPG/GIF + a few lines of text) is running (pictured at right). That’s Markos Moulitsas’ latest book, as if you needed me to tell you that. I presume that Daily Kos today is earning significantly less than its election-season peak.

What about Blog P.I.? I haven’t sold a Blogads slot in months, but then again, I almost never do. My traffic may be better than Michael “Heckuva Job” Brownie’s, but I consistently rank near or at the bottom of the Political Insiders Advertising Network. What can I say? I write for a very niche audience when I have the time and inspiration. That’s no way to build an audience, and consequently no way to build an advertising base.

I wonder if this slowdown and possible leveling-off of blogging as a business could bring back some of the amateurism of the blogosphere — a tradition Blog P.I. upholds proudly, if occasionally, at least until someone is willing to pay me to do this (though I am grateful to NMS for hosting this site). Until that time, I’d like to see an ascendance of long-form blogging from experts. More analysis, less attitude. More Ed Feltens and fewer Duncan Blacks.

This is an especially good time for it, as back-and-forth discussions and quick-hit commentary is already moving to Twitter. Of course we’ll need someone to pick out the best stuff, like Memeorandum but with an eye for quality. Just as Silicon Alley Insider suggested yesterday, a curator’s approach to content could be where editing as a profession is going.

Of course, for that you need money too, and money will be scarce over the coming year, which is why I think we will see less blogging for dollars and more blogging for ideas. It will be painful for many, and already has if you consider Gawker’s contraction. But it might be a worthwhile thinning of the herd. And there will be plenty of time to blog for dollars when the Dow is back over 10,000.

Why do I bring all this up? Because New Media Strategies (where I work and whence I type) has teamed up with Tropicana (the orange juice makers, not the casino resort) to create a Twitter-focused data visualization tool that we’re calling Fresh Squeezed Election Tweets, and just went live a few moments ago at www.anorangeamerica.com:

The site is continuously collecting tweets using the words “Obama” and “McCain”, counting up which other words appear with them — Vote, Election, Country — and other words that appear frequently — Bush, War, Lie (no one said Twitter was fair and balanced) — and representing this frequency by the size of the associated blue-red bubble. The bluer it is, the closer-aligned the keyword is with Obama; the more red, the more it’s McCain. And see the black lines connecting? Those show you which words are used together most: if you mouseover the keywords, you’ll get actual percentages. Did I mention it’s embeddable? I don’t think I did. Here, let me: It’s embeddable.

Is that cool, or what? Feel free to use it in your own posts and check back throughout the day, as the data set changes and perhaps reveals some insight into the day’s events. We might already have a pretty good idea who will be president-elect by day’s end, but Freshly Squeezed Election Tweets may help give a better idea why.

The image above was taken about five minutes before descending into cellular service to find five copies of the same press release in my inbox saying that (most) convention activities have been suspended (at least tomorrow) in anticipation of Hurricane Gustav.

And to think, I could have accepted an offer to be bumped to a Monday flight, which would have gained me three round-trip tickets (on AirTran, but still).

Whatever happens, I’m still on the clock for NMS and C-SPAN, so I don’t expect this will quite turn into a paid vacation. But I don’t know quite what to expect. Depending on how serious the damage from Gustav proves to be, it could be quite a morbid one.

N.B. I first tried posting a version of this from my iPhone from the airport, but something went awry. If I can’t get this fixed, this will put a serious damper on my plans to “mo-blog” or “iPhlog” the convention. Assuming, of course, that there is a convention. Meantime, you can always follow me on Twitter for the latest.

For 168+ hours now I’ve been working literally around the clock — to be more accurate, one revolution of the hour hand each solar day — finding and spotlighting blog posts from national and state-level media and political blogs, and running a Blogads campaign involving changes to the artwork and copy reflecting each evening’s developments (I like how it’s rendered on BuzzMachine best). I’ve also done C-SPAN TV twice, sitting on the back of my sport coat, focusing just beyond the camera lens, depending on the bug in my ear for cues, reporting on the latest buzz from the left- and rightosphere from the offices of New Media Strategies.

This week my role shifts, and in a dwindling few hours I’ll be flying to St. Paul, Minnesota for the Republican National Convention. As the NMS Blue Team returns from Denver, the Red Team will be shipping out to the metropolitan area where the Coens’ Fargo mostly took place. I travel both in my capacity as a representative of C-SPAN at the convention as well as an official, RNC-credentialed blogger, so I will do my best to share the experience with you.

This will be a new thing for Blog P.I., but a second time for me as a blogger at a GOP convo; in 2004 I was part of Hotline’s convention team in New York City, and I blogged the convention in my off-hours. Then, I took some pictures with my crummy first-ever Sprint camera phone, most of which were uploaded to a server I long since forgot to pay for. This time I’ll be blogging it here in this space, using my iPhone camera and WordPress app, available free of charge from iTunes (which by the way now is really crying out for rebranding).

For the next five days or so, I expect to be taking photos and posting them with minimal presentation, reserving most of my reporting and commentary for a widget from my Twitter account, which will appear here shortly. This is basically the opposite of what Blog P.I. has been in its two years-plus existence: whereas my blogging has primarily comprised several times-weekly essay posts (such as this one) I will instead switch to frequent, quick-hit posts that will take you inside the moment (I’m pretty sure I can do this).

If you’re going to be in the Twin Cities this week, gimme a shout (see the contact page). If you know me from e-mail or the Blogometer or Blog P.I. and want to say hello, drop me a line. If you know of a party, breakfast or similar event that’s either open-invitation or you can extend one, consider me interested. Need a mug, thumb drive or baseball cap emblazoned with the C-SPAN logo? We can probably work something out.

And but so, I’ll get back to packing a week’s worth of my least-unprofessional attire and making sure I don’t leave anything behind, with the DVR playing the Oregon Ducks’ 44-10 victory over the (Huck the) Fuskies as I close up shop here and make my way to the Lesser White North.

More coming soon.

What I can offer are details about the Convention Hub microsites. There will be two, one for each convention, with video and blog coverage around the clock:

• C-SPAN will provide exclusive video from the conventions, and for the first time, this C-SPAN video is searchable, clippable and embeddable. As someone who has tried (unsuccessfully) to jerry-rig an embeddable C-SPAN video in the past, this is a huge leap forward.
• NMS will feed the latest convention reporting and blogging to the Convention Hub pretty much non-stop. Or as our official language puts it, “extensive real-time blogosphere coverage using NMS’s proprietary combination of software and trained human analysts.”
• More about that software another time; all I can say is that it answers the questions I’ve asked about such analysis tools.
• The Hub will also include Twitter feeds of users using the hashtags #RNC08 and #DNC08 (and surely other tags, as their usage rises).
• The site goes live at c-span.org/politics later this month. The Democratic Hub will be at c-span.org/politics/DNC08 and the Republican Hub will be at c-span.org/politics/RNC08.
• NMS will have a presence at each convention to help to facilitate coverage and promote the Convention Hub. It certainly doesn’t hurt that we have bloggers credentialed to both (see you in St. Paul).
• There is more, but I’m not exactly sure what I didn’t see in the press release that’s public, so I’d better hold off for now. At the moment, this is the only public hint on c-span.org:

Meanwhile, the C-SPAN Convention Hub is already drawing praise from one of C-SPAN’s (few) notable critics. The Sunlight Foundation has differed with C-SPAN before over distribution of copyrighted C-SPAN video, so they are enthusiastic about the open nature of the Convention Hubs:

The convention announcement marks a new moment for C-SPAN as a modern Internet information provider. Once a small cable channel with a dream; now with embeddable web video, Twitter hashtags, and aggregated blog posts.

As a longtime C-SPAN junkie, I couldn’t be more proud to play a small part in this project. How dependent am I on the C-SPAN network?

• I wake up to Washington Journal every weekday morning (my Twitter account will bear this out).
• Before I found podcasts, I’d listen to streaming Realplayer segments from the program (I still listen to the podcast of Brian Lamb’s Sunday night Q&A).
• Back in college I would sometimes wake up early (4 a.m.) to catch particular episodes live, such as the first of the Hitchens-Sullivan conversations with Lamb, shortly after 9/11.
• If it’s the weekend and my television is not on baseball or football, it’s on BookTV.
• The tagline of my personal blog, The Washington Canard, is: “Where C-SPAN is the local TV news.”

The good news is that it’s a supportable addiction.

And by way of conclusion, a confession: I want this searchable video for my own reasons. On Election night 2004, The Hotline worked all through the night covering the coverage, as the election tipped from Kerry winning the exit polls to Bush winning the popular vote. If you’ve seen my Facebook photo, this is where that crazy image comes from.

As usual, C-SPAN cameras were in the office for Chuck Todd and Vaughn Ververs to offer recaps, also deep into the morning hours. Sometime around 3 o’clock in the morning, I informed friends watching the coverage from back on the West Coast to look carefully: As the cameras rolled, I picked up a plastic trash bin and… well, I danced through the background.

The waltz, I think.

I entered left with vulcanized dance partner, twirling across one shoulder, behind the talking head, past the other shoulder, exiting right. To this date, it’s still my best television appearance. And I look forward to the day, much sooner now, that I can embed this on Blog P.I.

I might as well get this out of the way: I am not actually about to eat the viewer. It just looks that way.