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As we noted a couple days ago, the so-called “Location War” was essentially an even match throughout the first few days of the SXSW festival in Austin, Texas. The services were in a dead-heat when it came to check-ins through Sunday, based on data we’d seen. But when it comes to tweets from the respective services, Foursquare, it seems, is dominating.

I had the service Trendrr send me some data for tweets being sent out with “4sq.com” and “gowal.la,” the short URLs for each service. As you can see in the graph above, while Gowalla has a much more steady stream of tweets sent to Twitter, Foursquare has huge spikes. In total, according to the Trendrr data, Foursquare is averaging about 500 Twitter posts per hour with peaks as high as 1,329 posts per hour. Gowalla is averaging about 100 posts per hour with a peak of 190 posts per hour.

Now, a few caveats: first, Foursquare has several actions that can be set to auto-tweet, which Gowalla doesn’t have. For example, when you unlock a badge or take over a mayorship on Foursquare, many people have their accounts set up to autotweet. Then, of course, there is checking-in. Gowalla tweets out only when you check-in at a place (if you set it to do so).

Second, this data is only for the past two days (Trendrr wasn’t tracking it before I asked), and it’s worldwide. The check-in data I cited for the dead-heat location war was from Austin only.

That said, there’s a reason why others are thinking Foursquare is dominating Gowalla, even here at SXSW: The amount of tweets sent from Foursquare seems way above the Gowalla tweets. I’ve noticed it, as have a dozen or so other people I’ve talked to here. Again, that doesn’t mean Foursquare is dominating in actual usage, just that they have a better system set up for this type of viral messaging (which plenty of people hate).

Trendrr also has more comprehensive data for the terms “Foursquare” vs. “Gowalla” (and they included “Loopt) on Twitter. There, as well, Foursquare dominates averaging about 20,000 posts a day, with Gowalla at just 3,000 a day (find that chart below). But that could also be because when Foursquare autotweets from accounts it includes the “@foursquare” branding on the end of the tweet while Gowalla does not.

Look for more comprehensive data about the Location War over the next few days.

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Guest Post
by Joe Marchese, SocialVibe CEO

In honor of Blogger’s 10th anniversary, we are excited to announce that you can now use your blogs to create positive, measurable social change. By adding the SocialVibe gadget to your blog, you’ll be turning brand dollars into real charitable donations for the cause of your choice. The World Wildlife Foundation, Nature Conservancy, DonorsChoose, Invisible Children, and Charity:Water are just a few of the great charities you can support on Blogger.

Once you install the SocialVibe sidebar gadget on your blog, money will be earned for charities every time readers engage with the gadget (e.g. rating a Showtime video clip). You can switch your cause and sponsor as often as you like, and receive regular updates from your charity about goal progress and impact. Thus far, SocialVibe has been able to raise over $500,000 for charities, and we know the Blogger community will be able to significantly increase this amount. In fact, we are setting a goal for the community to raise $50,000 before the end of the year (and remember, you don’t raise money by taking money out of your pocket—or your audience’s—but rather by getting your readers to engage with your SocialVibe gadget).

Adding the gadget is easy. Here’s the low-down on how you can use your blog to make a big impact:

Step 1 – Add the Gadget

From your Blogger dashboard, click the Layout tab. Then, click the Add a Gadget link and click on “Featured”, then select SocialVibe. (If you don’t see it in the Featured gallery, follow this link, or click “Add your own”. In the textbox, add the URL http://www.socialvibe.com/s/blogger/gadget.)

Step 2 – Configure Gadget
Here’s the fun part. Choose the cause you want to support from the drop-down list. If you want to customize the size and title, you can do that here as well, and you’ll see a preview of your gadget underneath. When you’re satisfied, click Save.

Congratulations, your gadget has now been added to your blog! Your readers can help you earn for your cause by engaging with your gadget, and will even have the chance to leave you comments and add a SocialVibe gadget to their own blog.

The yellow overlay you see on your gadget is only viewable by you, the blog owner. Click on the link in the overlay to create a SocialVibe.com account and earn even more charity donations by adding it to other networks such as Facebook, MySpace or WordPress.

With SocialVibe, the Blogger community can pool our individual influences to create positive change in the world. Never before has making a positive social impact online been this easy.

This is one of many features announced as part of Blogger’s 10th birthday. Happy Birthday!

View full post on Blogger Buzz

When bashing AT&T’s network, two cities usually come up above all others: New York City and San Francisco. AT&T has even acknowledged just how bad it is in those cities. But they’ve also said for a while that they’re working on making it better. And apparently now that work is far enough along that they’re emailing customers about it.

Over the past week, AT&T has been emailing its customers in San Francisco to let them know that the network is getting better. “We wanted you to be among the first to know! We recently enhanced the 3G network in the greater San Francisco area to provide better in-building 3G coverage, fewer dropped calls and a better overall wireless experience,” says the email.

It continues, “With better coverage on the nation’s fastest 3G network, there’s never been a better time to be an AT&T customer.” In other words, “things are getting better, please don’t leave.”

Hopefully, it’s a good sign if AT&T feels comfortable enough about its network to email its customers. Another good sign: AT&T did a great job this past week keeping its network stable during the SXSW festival (after failing badly last year). Still, AT&T has been saying for a while that they’re working on fixing the network in San Francisco, and on any given day it can be as bad as ever.

Below, find the full email being sent:

We wanted you to be among the first to know! We recently enhanced the 3G network in the greater San Francisco area to provide better in-building 3G coverage, fewer dropped calls and a better overall wireless experience.

The great news is coverage in Northern California will continue to improve as we expand capacity, optimize and add more sites in the coming months.

With better coverage on the nation’s fastest 3G network, there’s never been a better time to be an AT&T customer.

We thank you for your continued loyalty and look forward to sharing more good news soon.

View full post on TechCrunch