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The Next Big Thing After Twitter? Moo.com

Posted on April 9, 2008
Filed Under SXSW 2008, Web 2.0 (Observations) |

One of the questions that was raised before this years South by Southwest (SXSW) Festival was which (if any) product would rise to prominence in the heat of the Texan spring. The simple answer, now we’re all home, seems to be that the next Twitter is… Twitter.

While a number of other services did pop up on the horizon (many of them based around live video streaming or interactive video), the fact that yet again Twitter managed to act as a distributed chat room (both distributed over time and space), it helped everyone navigate around the parties, and this year stayed up made the usefulness of the service become clear.

What a shame that on Wednesday night, once music started, Twitter became useless. Sure I knew which of my friends had made it home, but with the number of my Twitter friends still in Austin able to be counted on one hand, the usefulness had evaporated.

Something did make the grade though - and through SXSW Interactive, Film and Music. My Moo cards.

For those of you not familiar with them, Moo cards are very small business cards with a thin design. Thanks to modern printing, you can have a pack of 100 Moo cards with as many different pictures for no extra cost. My current pack has ten copies of ten pictures for example. Now if you ignore the Web 2.0 Glitterati to who Moo is old hat, the reaction to these little cards was lovely. People spent time to look at the card, to look through all the cards and choose the one they wanted (and everyone had a different favourite).

More importantly, looking at the people who have got back in touch via email after SXSW, I’d say that a significant number of people who took a Moo card made a point of replying. It’s certainly a much bigger ratio of cards:mails compared to my regular sized card.

For impact during the event, for follow-ups after the event, for the lack of weight in carrying them in my hand luggage around the US, for cuteness, and for sheer practiability… this year’s winner at SXSW was Moo.

Comments

One Response to “The Next Big Thing After Twitter? Moo.com”

Kreg Steppe on April 10th, 2008 2:35

You know, I have had some moo cards for quite some time. They are great to have when I am out taking photographs. If someone wants a picture I just tell them to email me and hand them a card.

What’s more…I have had people take 2 or 3 cards like….Trading cards when they see that there are different images on them.

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