UPDATE:  Need another reason to choose Gowalla as your LBS at SXSW?  Facebook has partnered with them too.

(Full Disclosure:  I'll be at SXSW as part of the Chevrolet SXSW team and we've chosen Gowalla to work with to provide a cool experience for those at the festival.  Chevrolet is an official sponsor this year of SXSW)

This year will be my first South by Southwest Festival experience. 

As the legend goes, Twitter had its debutante party at SXSW and this year it's all about location based services.

So what's a girl with an iPhone to do with quite a few options? 

I'll admit, Foursquare is pretty cool and has lots of users.  In fact, I have switched back and forth between Gowalla and Foursquare a few times.  For Gowalla, wins for me were the interface and the fact that I could "play" while still being a homebody (being Mayor of anything besides my office was looking unlikely).  However, A LOT of my friends - both online and off - use FourSquare...so it's been hard to choose. 

However, I'm going to be using Gowalla exclusively.  If SXSW is all about location and location is all about being local, then Austin-based Gowalla is the way to go.

The social gaming aspect of location based services is very cool, but I'm thinking it will also be extremely helpful if I lose my friends in a crowd or want to find out where the hottest parties are via the volume of check-ins.  Also, since my husband will be following jealously along at home, I can share the experience with him, too.

Plus, Chevrolet and Gowalla have quite a few fun surprises in store.

I look forward to catching up with friends and making new ones at SXSW this year.

Let's connect on Gowalla so we can make those connections happen.

You can find me here.

And in the meantime, follow the Chevrolet Road Trip teams as they  make their way to Austin, plus all the action at the festival by following the #ChevySXSW hashtag because while location based services may be the "it" factor this year, Twitter is still sharing the spotlight with them.

What Location Based App will you be using? 

It's funny, the blog post about spam being more than just email spam the other day became a conversation around hashtag highjacking in general in the comments (I'm not missing the irony here.)

Basically, I was told that if the community decides to take over the conversation, especially when it comes to a brand, then it is their right to do so.  (I'd argue that there are people, yes, real human beings, that work at these companies, and YES!  even like their jobs...but I digress).

The comments started to give me pause, because it seemed they were moving in the direction of validating being aggressive and forceful.  The rationale was because the "minority" online was saying nice things about a company that the "majority" online had a big problem with and they wanted them to address that problem RIGHT THEN.

When force, intimidation, or mockery becomes involved, the notion of community disintegrates.   That happens online AND offline, no matter what side of the coin you're on.  Communities are not a new development here, we just have new channels for creating, fostering and...well, destroying them if we're not careful.  Human behavior continues to translate online...even if one is behind a computer instead of in a large crowd of people.  From my observation, the only change I've seen is that aggression can become more amplified.  But then again, so can the outpouring of support.  

I've seen more positive outcomes from community movements online when there's been positive intentions behind it.  Perhaps there's something to that.