A SXSW session on the social media bubble hosted by NYC agency Attention neatly summarised what the conference is all about.   One panellist called it a gathering of influencers who come here to be influenced.   And that’s a good way of putting it.

We arrive with the expectation that on our return we will be able to talk about the one amazing ‘thing.’  A shrink-wrapped ready made answer for our clients, “this year it’s all about X.”

Last year it was all about group messaging services such as GroupMe.   Previous year’s featured Foursquare and Twitter.  This year, already ordained by the tech press pre conference, it was all about ‘Highlight’ and another similar service Glancee.   Both tap into your social media profiles and the location based settings of your phone to tell you who is around you with similar interests.   Reactions to it have varied from creepy to awesome.

Highlight is part of a greater trend of socially discovery and predictive check-in apps, that was the subject of a final session I want to called #timebandits .  This featured applications such as Forecast http://foreca.st/ (tell your friends where you are going to be, not where you are now) and redrover , an app for parents that essentially allows you to spot child friendly places on the go and arrange impromptu meet-ups with other parents.

Speaking as a parent, it looks both good and very useful.  That was the take out from the session, these services fulfill a need.   To take location based services such as Foursquare for example, surely you want to know where your friends are going to be rather than have been.   Hence the need for something like Forecast.

Forecast’s designer Rene Pinnell felt that these applications could truly be revolutionary in changing how people react in the real world.   They can, but I think the key is not so much utility as simplicity, a point Rene acknowledged.   In fact, the Forecast team was involved in another venture a year ago called Hurricane Party, allowing you to create spontaneous parties on the fly.

Hurricane Party failed because, as Rene Pinnell admitted, it asked people to do and share too much.   By contrast, Rene pointed out that Instagram was a run-away success because it asked you to do one simple thing: Take a photo.  And that thing was something people do all the time anyway.

It might change behaviour (share your filtered photos through a mobile app), but it doesn’t created new behaviour as such.   Instagram boss Kevin Systrom for example admitted that he had problems getting his Dad to tweet, yet he found that a photo sharing service like his was both generation and language neutral.  Anyone could get it and take part.

I have both a professional and personal interest in wanting these services to succeed.   But I am realistic enough to know that their success or failure will be judged on how they work a month from now…and outside of Austin or San Francisco.   I’m about to fly to Florida.  Will I still get constant notifications about people on Highlight who share my interests and who I can connect with?   It will be interesting to see.

Finally, as a SXSW antidote, it is worth turning our attention to the other (alongside Instagram) social media service of the moment, Pinterest.  As this NY Times article points out , Pinterest did not go down the Foursquare, Highlight route of launching to the influencers in Austin.   It instead built its business organically by getting ordinary users to actually adopt and share.

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Earlier today, bloggers Ory Okolloh and Mark Belinsky wondered whether Apple’s tablet (now unveiled as the iPad) would “kill Haiti like Michael Jackson killed Iran.”    In other words, if some major celebrity or gadget focused news breaks, do those of us online forget what could be considered the real news, involving many real lives.

According to the Pew New Media Index, the answer is yes.   The blogosphere (and social media in general) might indeed be quickening the news cycle, shortening attention spans and causing us to zone out when it comes to hard news…preferring to move onto lighter topics.   Like sex really.

In the first week of January, the mainstream media led with the failed bomb plot on the NWA flight from Amsterdam to Detroit, the economy and terrorism in general.

Looking at blogs however, the NWA flight was number two.   The number one topic that seemed to get bloggers hot under the collar was the Kings College (London) study that the female ‘g-spot’ was a myth.    And third was news that dating site beautifulpeople.com had kicked out 5000 members for not being that aesthetically pleasing.

This actually made the top trending story on Twitter with the NWA terror attempt relegated to number five.

Twitter does over index when it comes to journalists and various social media ‘influencers’ being active members.   Twitter and blogs have also played a key role in giving anti-Government demonstrators in Iran a way of getting the word out.

Yet, at the same time the Pew results also put things into some perspective and reinforce the continued need for serious news journalism.

For example, yesterday, so before the official iPad launch, Venture Beat produced a list of Twitter trends for various US and non US cities.

‘Thoughts on the toilet’ trended just about everywhere…but interest in Haiti seeming to be decidedly on the wane.   While it was still a top trend in LA, San Francisco and London it was no longer on the trends list for Washington, New York or Sao Paolo.

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