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During a panel today at SXSW interactive entitled “Gossip - Britney leaks iPhone upgrade on Facebook. w00t. Gossip or News? Do we have time for facts?” a member of the audience was speaking passionately about a point made towards the panel only to have the moderator say “did you say ecosystem or egosystem?”. Considering the barrage of ammunition cementing the thought of “everybody will be famous for 15 megabytes” there could not have been a better new term coined today.

First off, the biggest twitter-ific news around the Austin Convention Center today was regarding the keynote questioning of Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook fame by Sarah Lacy, a writer for BusinessWeek but also coincidentally the author of a book on Zuckerberg. The interview is being covered on the web with great pageantry, but to put it in perspective, it would be a bit like watching Tyra Banks interview Warren Buffet (now the wealthiest man in the world) at a business conference. Sarah gave off a bit of a hot-for-teacher vibe and the geek audience wanted nothing to do with her batting-eyelashes-at-the- billionaire routine. To Sarah’s defense, if Andy Rooney or Janet Reno had interviewed Mark instead with the same questions, the audience would have behaved. But who knew that Mark was quite so dull? He loves the word empathy, but what does throwing sheep at someone (one of Facebook’s more popular activities) have to do with empathy? His equating Facebook as a new method for facilitating communication makes him sound like Alexander Graham Bell in a North Face pullover. The reality is that if you remove the audience and hype around Facebook, you are left with Friendster (but with sheep-throwing ability): with audience equates to a $15 billion valuation… without audience, you’re looking at $15.

Here is Oscar-nominated Diane Lane registering for her SXSW badge. Based on my KGB-like photography, you’ll just have to believe me.

Walking around in the crowd of conference attendees, you hear the best phrases, such as “Wow, this looks like March of the Blackberries” and within conference rooms, quotes like “I don’t do sincere very well”.

The end of day Gossip panel featured Alan Citron from TMZ.com (which he revealed was receiving 7 million pageviews per day), Shaila Dewan from the New York Times (who said she reported on stories about the South land and came off as very sincere, but also a bit horrified by the land of Twitter and their like), Heather Gold (proudly lesbian comic moderator), Owen Thomas of Valleywag (Perez Hilton with 15 years on him) and Evan Williams of Twitter (just happy to be there). The panel started going until someone in the audience (and in my row) boo’ed Mr. Valleywag. After some explanation, the boo’er was revealed to be Julia Allison, a Playboy-friendly on-screen reporter for Star Magazine. After a wee bit of urging from the moderator, she was called up to sit on the panel, and more specifically, on the lesbian moderator’s lap. She then asked for a chair.

As it goes, Julia has been crucified a bit on Valleywag, a Silicon Valley gossip site, for her various dating habits which she herself documents online. She confessed that Valleywag “made her cry” last week. She also confessed to hating gossip and “who the hell cares about Britney and Lindsay” yet she reports about them with glee. Come again? It also came out that she “does not have a twitter”. When an audience member said that this was the best panel he has ever seen in all his years attending SXSW, loud applause filled the room.

Earlier in the day, there was a well-attended panel about content boundaries featuring Heather Armstrong of dooce.com and Margaret Mason of Mighty Girl. Both were very well spoken and came off as well-meaning. The battle between writer and audience was documented with great passion. And it was proclaimed, in blogging, “don’t be vanilla”.

The takeaway from the day’s discourse was that with the monumental lack of barrier to self-publishing to the world comes a whole host of issues and concerns about self-publishing as a concept. It does stir the soul of the casual author and the voyeuristic reader… but in a good way or self-pummeling way?

Bring on the music part of the conference… musicians are seeming so put-together in comparison.