We were packed in among thousands — not to mention those relegated to spillover telecast-viewing rooms — last week for the now-infamous South By Southwest Interactive keynote interview of Twitter c0-founder Evan Williams.
Instead of the much-anticipated announcement about his company’s monetization plan, Williams unveiled in the first few minutes of the session @Anywhere, an app that allows people to access Twitter from anywhere on the Internet. Kind of interesting, but not what everyone was hoping to hear.
In short order, the egress began, and by the end of the session the ballroom was a big black cave filled with armies of empty chairs. Considering that the audience did not actively revolt as it did during the Mark Zuckerberg debacle of 2008, I’m not sure if I’d go so far as FastCompany’s Alissa Walker, who said that it “was likely the most horrifically devastating keynote presentation in SXSW history.” But, man, was it boring. So much, in fact, that “as bad as an Evan Williams keynote” became the simile of choice among presenters and attendees for the remainder of the conference.
Given all this drama and buildup, the Twittersphere was abuzz again yesterday when Williams’ co-founder, Biz Stone, dropped a few breadcrumbs in a CNBC interview at CTIA Wireless 2010 about the soon-to-be-revealed plan to make Twitter a sustainable business.
Granted, there’s no real news yet. Still, what hopes and fears do you have in advance of Twitter’s big announcement?
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