SXSW Interactive aka “Spring Break for the Internet” is over, and the dust is starting to settle. Everybody’s playing speculator, trying to spot “The Next Twitter.” Nothing really broke out of the pack with a barrel of momentum the way Twitter did last year, but here are the two biggest contenders:

+Bitstrips: YouTube for comics? Users create characters & strips starring their creations. Since this is SXSW we’re talking about, a lot of the best stuff so far has been about the conference. See above for the Zuckerberg clusterf*ck, and take a look at some good one-panels of SXSW Music Fest acts–here’s a Vampire Weekend schematic, and a cartoon version of Lou Reed’s money quote from his keynote.

+Sched.org: Nice scheduling app that the developers took the time to fill with SXSW’s panels & shows. It’s not gonna replace my GCal anytime soon, but the social aspect of it (“367 Cool Kids Going to Vampire Weekend 11pm @ Antone’s”) is pretty cool. Makes me feel kind of bad for Moby though: “119 Cool Kids Attending Moby 10pm @ Vice.”

Twitter’s launch seemed as much a “right place/right time” thing as anything else: what better launchpad for a narcissistic attention-defecit “microblogging social network” than a conference for narcissistic ADD social networking geeks? Both of these guys are fun and appropriately social, but neither has the immediate gratification or “let-me-txt-u-abt-my-rly-cute-cat” factor of Twitter.