SXSWi concluded the conference Tuesday with the interactive awards and a performance by the Foo Fighters. Like that band’s discography post-"Learning To Fly," the list of winners isn’t worth checking out. That isn’t to say that there aren’t some cool products and services that picked up awards last night, I’m sure there are, all I’m saying is the truly deserving services will get attention with or without some inane ceremony. SXSWi is about the buzz, not some statuettes.

Based entirely off conversations and my own opinions this is who I think really won SXSWi this year.

Winners
Beluga and Groupme
The advantage of having a personal chat room-like texting service is obvious, especially at a logistical nightmare like SXSW. These service combine the brevity and bottom-line communication of Twitter while connecting you and your friends in a Facebook-esque way. Beluga is even owned by Facebook and syncs with it flawlessly. Everyone was using these service to find out where friends were and organize around the best spots. I’ve been using Beluga and am loving it, but you do need smartphones for all users. The up side is its syncing with Facebook is stupidly easy. Groupme, on the other hand, uses your phone’s traditional text service so our non-smartphone owning compatriots can join in. Groupme pulled in the most buzz during the conference, but I think Beluga will eventually win out. Its Facebook advantage is huge because, hey, everyone knows Facebook. When the Internet giant realizes what a potentially popular platform they have here one big push could wipe away all competitors.

Hurricane Party and Gowalla
In the location-based space I’ll call this one a tie. Hurricane Party seems to have enjoyed a healthy amount of buzz, with more than 5,000 mentions on Twitter according to my estimations.* Also, they got a nice write-up on Mashable and their event to raise funds for Japan pulled in an impressive $10,000. But I’m going to share this award with a veteran in this space - Gowalla. I don’t know if people were going so far as to declare the check in wars over, but it certainly seemed like Foursquare had an unbeatable lead. Fortunately no one told the Austin-based company that because it came to the festival with a heavy presence. Of course, Josh William downplayed the “check in war” by saying Gowalla and Foursquare aren’t competitors and have different goals. I’m not sure how many people buy that.

Mashable
Not only were they the most talked about thing at SXSW, but even people who aren’t techies are referencing the web-centric news site. To call it just a social media blog now seems so diminishing. Mashable has emerged as the go-to source for all things online. Their almost inhuman speed in reporting what the Internet is thinking about can be unreal and they’re besting veterans in this space (Wired, Gizmodo, a trillion other tech blogs). This SXSW just increased their lead as the web’s leader.

Apple
Apple always wins.

Losers

Ok, SXSWi is awesome, so I only have one loser - innovation. Even the most talked about services and products seem meek in comparison to previous years’ conferences. Where was the service that boldly proclaimed it was going to change the world? All I saw was stuff that might help me find drink specials or turn my tweets into text messages (ok I made that last one up, but it sounds like something that would have been there). The highest praise a lot of these services can attain is ‘useful’ or ‘clever’. Not everything needs to be game changing, and this is no one individual’s fault, but at least someone needs to really be thinking big. Fortunately, Bruce Sterling’s closing speech dared the Millenials to break off and revolt, about anything really. Hopefully it’ll get some young developer’s head burning with ideas.

*My estimations received by typing “hurricane party” OR @hurrricaneparty site:twitter.com into Google.