5 things learned at South by Southwest (SXSW)

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"Austin, Texas (CNN) -- For techies, the South by Southwest Interactive festival produces a firehose of information.

With keynote speeches, hundreds of panel discussions, a trade floor full of new gadgets and nonstop networking opportunities with 15,000 or so like-minded folks, it's impossible to take it all in.

It also may be too soon to pinpoint the most important things to come out of the festival, which ended Tuesday. The most significant outcome may be an idea sparked in a panel or a party conversation that someone takes home and turns into the next Facebook or Twitter.

But after five days of reporting, we can identify some key themes. So here, in no particular order, are five observations from five days in Austin."

At SXSW, attendees confront Twitter saturation

"By now, the story of how Twitter exploded onto the scene at the 2007 South by Southwest festival is legend in technology circles.

But here at SXSW 2009, the notion of the perfect match among community, service, and event seems flipped on its head. Many people are discovering that a monumental oversaturation of tweets is reversing the value that Twitter offered at SXSW 2007 and SXSW 2008 for finding friends and great parties.

At SXSW, the standard is for everyone to include the tag '#sxsw' in their tweets. For example, on Friday, I was looking for sources for a different story and tweeted, 'If you are launching an iPhone app at #sxsw, or know someone who is, please let me know. Thanks!'"

Facebook fun goes mobile with iPhone applications

"Facebook is letting users of its flourishing social-networking community play together on the road by using Apple's popular iPhone and iPod Touch mobile devices.

Facebook senior platform manager Dave Morin revealed the news Saturday while flanked by an array of hip social software makers at a panel talk at South By Southwest (SXSW) Interactive Festival in Austin, Texas.

'For the first time, your iPhone apps can now have friends,' Morin said before panelists demonstrated applications that expand the borders of Facebook's online community onto iPhones and iPod Touch devices.

Facebook Connect for the iPhone debuted with nine applications available at Apple's online iTunes store and a promise that more will launch in coming days."