Jeff Pulver and Justin Kownacki have been advancing a conversation last week week that the germ of which started at this year’s SxSWi in Austin. In Siegler-esque headlines, the question is “What was this year’s Twitter at SxSW?”

In terms that don’t make the early adopters gag, the real question is actually: “How relevant and likely to go mainstream are the location based social networks, with emphasis on Foursquare and Gowalla?” Location-based social networks were the buzz of the conference, or at least what most people were paying attention to during the show, due to the hype from a couple of specific organizations.

After trying to pay attention to what would be 2009’s Twitter and coming away somewhat disappointed, I decided to just keep an open mind, schedule tons of briefings and see what themes emerged from the conference this year.  I came away with a much different conclusion that what most did, which I’ll get into in later posts, but in terms of the “location based social networking wars,” I think the clear answer as to which one is going to end up mainstream and replacing Twitter is: none of them.

In their essence, a location based social network is simply a feature of another service, and generally isn’t something you can build up a service around that most people are going to be interested in.  Certainly, both Gowalla and Foursquare were very heavily used in Austin this year, but mostly because Austin is very much an edge case for this type of usage.

Austin and SxSW are unique in that Austin is a highly dense city for special events.

Perhaps in many conference setups, which are edge cases in and of themselves, location based networks like these are highly useful in finding out where people you want to be with are at the time in a way that doesn’t interrupt the flow of what those people are doing. That isn’t exactly what these tools are designed for, though: they’re engineered to appeal to the mainstream, and aren’t always effective for that particular purpose.

For instance (and as you can see in the video on this post), Michael and I spent a great deal of time chasing the tail of the people we were supposed to be hanging out with one night in Austin because they assumed that simply checking in from where they were would be enough signal for us to find them (and opted to not answer their phones or DMs or emails).  As a result, we ended up walking in excess of 10 miles around the city until we finally gave up, used Twitter to advertise where we were, and let people find us.

These apps seem like they’re intended to be more for personal entertainment than to serve any useful purpose.  We tried looking up the events on Gowalla’s service, for instance, to find the address – which was simply listed as “Austin” (yeah, super helpful. I thought it might be in Seattle or something).  Foursquare wasn’t much better, since it occasionally provides an address for an event, but there’s no easy way to click and find a map on most mobile devices, where that map would be most useful (though the map is generally included in the PC version of the event page).

SxSW provides more early adopters and geeks per square inch than any other festival.

Show me another city, or any city, that has that density of geeks willing to advertise their every movement for the sake of the coolness of the technology they’re working with. You won’t find it because very simply people enjoy having some privacy. Real people sometimes go to the strip club without their wife or coworkers. Real people sometimes go to the free clinic, the liquor store, or work at places where the address isn’t advertised (like call centers, and certain assembly plants, for instance).

Regardless of whether advertising location is optional on these kinds of networks, it’s a hard sell for someone who’s concerned about advertising their location that rare 5% of the time, even, to use an app where their location is trumpeted and featured for the world to see.  It isn’t about the “PleaseRobMe” part of the equation.  It’s about people valuing their privacy over their social life, and not having the time to figure out how to keep them separate.

Austin’s wireless networks are still more densely covered on a variety of networks than most North American cities.

Austin’s wireless access, most notably AT&T, haven’t been foolproof in years past, but they have been pretty usable on the whole (and in particular this year). But if you think everyone has easy and free access to not just the type of devices that allow this sort of connectivity but the networks, I need to put you in a room with Steven Hodson for about 15 minutes.  You’ll never make that mistake again, trust me:

One. Providers are pocketing fistfuls of cash while not bothering to make needed improvements and upgrades to their networks. All the while they are making us pay through the nose for services that cost pennies on the dollar for better service in other countries.

You reap what you sow ya pricks.

Two. Everyone is going to become a high-use mainstream user. That’s suppose to be the plan anyway isn’t it? Isn’t that what we are being told – mobile your life sucker – live on the web where ever you are.

Ya that plan is working out well – except if they keep to their game plan we’ll have to all hawk our first born to afford it.

Yup this is going to work out real well.

He’s written about this dozens of times in various places around the web (my other favorites are here and here). The point is, though, that save for a few markets lucky enough to currently be in Clear / Sprint’s 4G markets, very few Americans have access to affordable wireless, and even fewer Canadians and Mexicans have that sort of access (due to regulatory and economy issues).

No matter how cool the handheld device or how much the average consumer may or may not want to share their location with the world, the cost of network access is and continues to be the biggest barrier to entry for location based social networks, a problem Facebook and Twitter don’t have, since base functionality on those networks are accessible on even my $20 “dumb” phone.

So, Who Won this War, Again?

There weren’t any real winners to the Great LBS War of 2010, unless you consider the incumbents like Google, Twitter and Facebook to be participants. The big guys’ turf is safe for now. Remember how Facebook used Friendfeed, even before they bought them as their own private R&D lab, ganking all their features? The smart product guys there are going to be able to learn from the failures of the LBS networks and incorporate their whole platforms into future releases.

[Editor’s Note: Photo credits to Scott Beale / Laughing Squid and Dean Terry. Some video credits to Michael Sean Wright, Chuck Reynolds, Greeblemonkey, and GamingTrend. –mrh]