The "Monster" SXSW Tech Week

South by Southwest (SXSW), the vast festival in Austin, Texas, covering music, film and interactive technologies, is starting off with a bang. Representatives from the likes of Twitter, Google, Microsoft, Spotify and hundreds of other companies of all sizes are addressing the tens of thousands of attendees throughout these first five days.

But what’s interesting about SXSW is not just the big names, it’s the smaller developers and start-ups who are presenting their ideas in the tucked away corners of Austin’s Convention Centre and the surrounding hotels into which the conference overspills. Finding them is another matter – the list of speakers runs to 41 pages.

The SXSW Web Awards took place last night (winners here), with location-sharing service Gowalla beating out Foursquare for best site in the mobile category and search site Wolfram Alpha nabbing Best in Show. TechCrunch liveblogged Twitter co-founder Evan Williams’s keynote Q&A. Evan did not go into details about the company’s new ad platform and was surprisingly tedious according to many audience members. But his Twitter posts about the event were followed in awe by millions. Other big news: Google Buzz was a “privacy fail” (via ReadWriteWeb), and music service MOG will let you stream any song on demand to your phone (via GigaOM).

This event is starting off like it was intended: “A hotbed of discovery and interactivity, the event offers lucrative networking opportunities and immersion into the art and business of the rapidly evolving world of independent film.”