SXSW strikes me a great place to have a good time, do some networking/socializing and take in a few panels. But it also seems like a lot of navel-gazing and backslapping happens. As well, you have to keep in mind SXSW is where the digit-rati come to roil themselves into a lather about the next, new shiny toy.

Case in point is Foursquare, Gowalla and the location-based services world. If there was one blog post about LBS, there were a hundred about how SXSW was going to be the big launch pad – much like Twitter jumped out of obscurity and into the mainstream in 2008. The buzz about LBS is just another illustration of how the high-tech world keeps consumers engaged and, hopefully, buying.

And while I’m sure a lot of people used Foursquare and Gowalla during SXSW, I didn’t get the impression from the coverage or tweet-age that LBS was all the rage. But that didn’t seem to stop some people from proclaiming “Long live Foursquare; say goodbye to Twitter”.

Case in point is CNet’s Daniel Terdiman, who declared that Foursquare and Gowalla are “forced to be reckoned with this year”. Aside from lots of buzz and blog enthusiasm, I think Terdiman’s assertion is premature. So fare, Foursquare and Gowalla are still small, niche services that have yet to demonstrate they’re anything more than novelties renting the spotlight until the next shiny trinket comes along.

While you can draw comparisons between the early days of Twitter and Foursquare, the biggest difference is Twitter exploded because it offered lots of different people value as a user-friendly service to communicate, share, market and sell. While Foursquare has potential, I don’t see the same kind of mainstream utility. That could change as Foursquare evolves into more than simply a service to broadcast where you’re located, but until that happens, my enthusiasm will be held in check.

Do you agree with Terdiman or think he’s part of the hype machine?

More: Looks like there’s some backlash about SXSW Interactive, and how it’s evolved.

1. Over-tweeting. It’s about quality rather than quantity. Anyone tweeting 20, 30 or 40 times/day has too much time on their hands, a short attention span, a willingness to share too much, or should allocate some of this creative energy towards blog posts.

2. Starting and stopping: Doing well at social media means doing it on a day-in, day-out basis. It’s about grunting it out as opposed to moving in fits and starts. The worst thing that you can do is go crazy for a couple weeks, and then disappear for two weeks. Your audience doesn’t know if you are coming or going, and they’ll eventually stop tuning in.

3. Spam: If your posts, tweets or update are mostly about promoting your own products, services or ideas, it will turn people off sooner rather than later. Social media isn’t about one-side conversations.

4. Me, me, me: Again, posts, tweets or updates that are about you – your caffeine habits, your lack of sleep, your children, your work, etc. become tiring really, really quickly. Honestly, I don’t care that much about you.

5. Offering nothing of value. Social media is about giving and offering advice, insight and information about interesting articles, blog posts and online services. If you’re not doing that, it’s just a one-sided conversation, which isn’t much fun.

6. Automation overkill. I’m not anti-automation tools. In fact, I think when used the right way, they can make your social media efforts far more productive and efficient. It’s when automation tools are used badly, that causes trouble. If your tweets are the same as your Facebook updates are the same as your LinkedIn updates, are the same as your MySpace updates, that’s not good; that’s just lazy.

7. Using a shot-gun approach, which involves using many social media services as opposed to using a small number really well. With a shot-gun approach, what usually happens is everything gets done badly or, at best, in a mediocre way. Instead, companies should walk before they run by focusing on one or two social media services, and doing them really well. Based on how things go and the lessons learned, then expansion into other services makes sense.

Over the past few months, I’ve been looking a number of online accounting systems, including Xero. Today, a new player officially enters the fray: Toronto-based Wave Accounting. It’s good to see a Canadian start-up getting in the market, especially one that seems to have lots of potential given how many applications are going into the cloud.

While I haven’t had much time to try Wave Accounting, first impressions are good. It’s relatively easy to set up, although the process to get up and going needs to be smoother. The service seems to have all of the necessary ingredients, including a way to send invoices.

The price structuring is flat at $19.99/month, although volumes discounts are offered for six and 12-month plans. In an ideal world, it would be good to see tiered-pricing to meets the needs of different sized companies – along the lines of what Xero and ClearBooks do. That said, the prices are reasonable, especially for small companies looking for an online service that lets multiple people access an accounting system.

Kirk Simpson, one of Wave’s co-founders, said Wave was started because there’s a major opportunity for a service that meets the needs of small business owners – given 65% of them are using spreadsheets for at least part of the accounting needs.

The target audience, he said, is employees with five employees or less. “We don’t ever see ourselves going after mid and large size companies – ever,” he said. “They have customized needs that require a more robust solution. We see this solution working for both self-employed entrepreneurs and small companies with a few employees. Obviously our target market will be internet-savvy and that segment is constantly growing.”

Simpson believes the online accounting market is poised for major growth because smaller companies are looking for services that offer accessibility, collaboration and automatic data back-up. And while there is competition from larger players, he contends they are just moving their desktop applications into the cloud as opposed to building true online services.

Moving forward, Wave plans to integrate its accounting service with other companies meeting the needs of small business owners. This includes invoicing (a partnership with Freshbooks would make perfect sense) and payroll management.

For anyone interesting in an online accounting system, Wave is definitely worth checking out. It offers a 30-day free trial that doesn’t require a credit card to register. Any data put into the system during the trial period can be exported if you decide not to buy it.

But in many ways, it’s oddly flawed. In particular, the hand-held tool isn’t user-friendly because it’s difficult to get into action, which discourages it from being used. The DC25 also comes with a lot of different parts when, in fact, only a few are used.

Don’t get me the wrong the DC25 is a great vacuum cleaner but at $699, it’s probably more vacuum cleaner than most people need.

This takes us to Foursquare. Unlike blogs, Facebook and Twitter, I’m not a Foursquare user and I don’t see that changing. Simply put, broadcasting my location has little appeal because the benefits aren’t compelling.

That said, I am fascinating with Foursquare. In particular, I’m intrigued by what is happening behind the scenes. Fueled by an army of users – 500,000 and counting – Foursquare is accumulating massive amounts of data about places, as well as comments from users about those places. At the same time, it is layering on value-added content from partners such as Zagat.

In the process, Foursquare is building a content-rich, location-driven application that could go in a number of different directions.

It could, for example, become a powerful local search engine. Foursquare could be the company to solve the location advertising “nut” that countless number of start-ups have been scrambling to tackle. It could become a lucrative data licensee, selling access to its API to companies looking to take advantage of its location-based data and content. Or it could become an e-commerce powerhouse.

A good example of Foursquare’s potential is a new service launched this week called FourWhere, which combines Foursquare’s data and content with the Google Maps API. Created by Sysomos (a client), FourWhere is a user-friendly way for Foursquare users and non-users to easily and quickly access relevant and valuable data. FourWhere is just one example of how Foursquare could evolve.

In the meanwhile, Foursquare will continue to encourage its users to build its database – the ultimate game of crowdsourcing. According to GigaOm’s Liz Gannes, Foursquare has had 15.5-million check-ins and awarded 1 million badges since its launch.

Having used Disqus at Twitterrati, I went looking for another comment system to see if there was another good option. After a bit of research, I came across Echo, which appeared to have many of the necessary features. I particularly liked how Echo would display tweets as well as comments – thereby providing coverage of more conversations about my blog posts.

Installing Echo was pretty straightforward, and the comments already within the blog were imported easily and quickly.

After a week or so of it, I’m not completely convinced it’s a long-term solution. The look and feel isn’t as polished as I’d like it to be, and the administrative functions need to be improved in terms of usability and intuitiveness.

Given Disqus and IntenseDebate have free versions, I’m surprised Echo costs $12/year after a 30-day trial period. Not that $12 is a lot of money but the lack of a free version is a detraction.

To be honest, I’d probably have uninstalled Echo already but there doesn’t appear to be an easy to uninstall it, which is completely strange.

Any thoughts on other blog comment systems?

There’s StartupNorth, TechVibes, Telecom Trends, Steve Hodson and myself. But where’s everyone else?

I know they’re out there because once in awhile you run across a blog with great content. The problem is they’re difficult to find because Canada lacks a good blog directory. This makes it challenging to find any Canadian blogger, let alone high-tech bloggers.

My interest in putting the spotlight on Canadian high-tech bloggers is two-fold.

From a personal standpoint, I’m a high-tech enthusiast, and always looking for new places to read about Canadian companies and entrepreneurs. Professionally, I work with a lot of really interesting start-ups, and it’s disappointing to not have a wide variety of blogs where they can tell their stories.

At a time when Canadian newspaper coverage of high-tech is far from ideal, blogs are becoming more important as places to discuss, discover and celebrate the country’s high-tech industry. We need to have more people engaged in putting Canadian technology in the spotlight to support all the good things happening.

About a week ago, I started to post updates on Twitter for Canadian high-tech bloggers to come out of the woodwork. So far, about 10 bloggers who have been brave enough to raise their hands.

If you write a high-tech blog that includes Canadian content, let me know by leaving a comment or sending an e-mail to markevans@mail.org. In the next couple of weeks, I’ll follow up with another post with details with the blogs that I’ve compiled.

For Akoha (a client), this was a reality it had to tackle. Launched at TechCrunch50 in late-2008, Akoha was a social game that used “mission cards” to do good things for other people and your community. Akoha users completed thousands of missions in more than 65 countries but the company realized that to really execute on the opportunity, it needed a new strategic direction.

After months of development, the Montreal-based company is relaunching today with a refreshed Web site, an iPhone app and, as important, a brand new approach that makes the service more fun and interesting. The cards have disappeared so the missions are easier to play individually or with other people. For every mission completed, players get awards – much like they do with services such as Foursquare and Gowalla.

The missions range from simple fun to being a good community citizen – everything from taking a photo of a cool piece of graffiti, buying a friend dinner, supporting a local artist, or doing a physical activity.

At the core of the new Akoha is the iPhone app, which makes it much of a spontaneous and capture the moment kind of activity. Akoha is a social activity that really encourages people to do more with their iPhones than post updates or broadcast their locations.

One of the challenges facing Foursquare is making this information easily accessible to its users AND people who don’t use Foursquare. Stepping into the breach is a new service called FourWhere, which mashes together locations and content from Foursquare with the Google Maps API to create a user-friendly tool to help bring Foursquare’s content front and centre.

Created by Sysomos (a client), FourWhere is easy to use. You start by providing your location (city or address) and then right-click on the map to see the places where Foursquare users have been and any tips and comments they have left about a particular location.

For example, if you’re looking for a cafe and restaurant in downtown Toronto, FourWhere will show all the places checked-in by Foursquare users on a map. FourWhere users have the option of getting information about the places or comments about them.

Sysomos plans to enhance FourWhere by adding content analytics, as well as more real-time information from other social media sources from Sysomos’ extensive content database.

With SXSW kicking off on Friday, the question is whether the major theme this year that location-based services capture the spotlight. Will SXSW be the moment in time that Foursquare goes from the digital elite’s newest shiny toy into a service that starts to resonate with a much larger audience?

At this point, I’m not convinced Foursquare has enough appeal to more than a niche player. For now, Foursquare is a fun novelty that lets you broadcast your location by checking in. Hey, I’m at Tim Horton’s! Hey’s I’m at Starbucks? Hey, I’m the mayor of the Sunset Grill.

The reality is the novelty starts to wear off because there’s not much value in telling the world where you’re located or whether you’re such a creature of habit that you get become the “mayor”.

While I’m sure the SXSW crowd will find ways to use Foursquare because, after all, it’s new bauble. But it’s going to take more than just the gang in Austin to make Foursquare become significantly more than what it is now.

For Foursquare to jump to the next level, it has to offer more value for users and non-users. The value of Foursquare isn’t the location broadcasting but the “tips” that people are leaving about these places, and the value-added information being provided on top of it.

I don’t care that you’re the mayor of the Monk’s Table but the comments left about the beer being first-rate and, perhaps, a Zagat review are far more valuable and useful.

Right now, Foursquare users are a super-structure that needs lots of other stuff to give it substance. Maybe in this way, it is like Twitter, which became more valuable as more people used it.

While I’m sure Foursquare will get a lot of buzz week as it introduces a new look and feel, don’t expect to see a Twitter-like performance.