These Apps Hope to Capture South by Southwest Hype and Make It Last

Every March, 80,000 startup hustlers, PR pushers, Twitter personalities, wantrepreneurs, mid-level marketing executives, corporate titans grasping at relevance, professional connectors, LinkedIn power users, and desperate reporters descend on Austin, Tex. They're there to check out new products, hear a little music, schmooze, and anoint the next hot app. Twitter caught fire at South by Southwest, and the conference helped mark Airbnb as a potentially industry-shaping idea. Several startups have been toiling for months, hoping the festival, which starts on Friday, will be the fuel that launches them into the rare air of cultural phenomena.

The makers of Anchor, a new mobile audio app billing itself as "radio by the people," see the festival as a kind of coming-out party. Anchor acts as an audio message board. People record themselves, publish their voices to the masses, and then hopefully receive a flurry of public audio replies (called waves)—all within Anchor's application.