- Todd Wasserman

PepsiCo is harnessing Twitter for a sponsorship of South by Southwest '09 with a "Twitter Visualization" that's designed to showcase all the chatter around the event.

Tweets from people at the show are running on Pepsicozeitgeist.com, which also includes features like "Party Watch" and "Swarm"—a map of the area showing where the tweets are emanating from. The site will also be displayed on screens throughout the conference, which starts tomorrow.

Bonin Bough, director of social media for PepsiCo, said the idea is to "enhance festival-going" and to co-create with digital influencers. This is the first time PepsiCo is sponsoring the show, which many credit with popularizing Twitter in 2007.

Bough said there are no plans as of yet to use the tool in other contexts beyond South by Southwest. Other Web 2.0 events provided by PepsiCo at the show include a "podcast playground," which presents a live broadcast from the event.