Cross-posted from sxsw.echoditto.com. For more of our South By Southwest coverage, head over there.

It's all over. Amidst the haze of beer, URLs and nicotine hand lotion (available in every conventioneer's bag!), who had the most memorable presence? Well, with the caveats that I couldn't see as many panels or people as I would've liked (particularly since my flight left Tuesday morning), here are some overall impressions of SXSW.

Most Buzzed-About: Twitter (by a mile)
This one's easy. The folks from Obvious Corp were determined to make a splash, putting up Twitterified plasma screens, handing out t-shirts (text: "wearing my twitter shirt") and approaching panelists about their service. Honestly, they didn't have to bother: if a panelist wanted to namedrop an exciting new technology, they almost always chose Twitter. It was fun to watch our friend Alex, who's just been hired by Twitter after doing some contract work, enjoy his new company's success with contented bafflement.

In fact, Twitter was such a runaway hit that you can already see the backlash against it forming. Maybe it was just the lack of other compelling new technologies, but at the moment Twitter is the standard-bearer for Web 2.0 enthusiasm — and that's a perilous place for a service founded on simplicity to be, no matter how good it is.

But there's no question that their moment in the sun has only just started — and it's a fun (if overwhelming) service run by some very smart people. They deserve the accolades, if not the responsibility that people will inevitably assign to them. Consider this a preemptive backlask to the backlash.

Best Session: Matt Mullenweg
I really enjoyed Phil Torrone and Limor Fried's keynote, and I heard very positive reviews of Dan Rather's interview. But of the regular sessions, Wordpress.com's Matt Mullenweg was probably the best-prepared and most inspirational. I came in late to the session and predisposed to dislike it — the darkened room and solitary figure pacing the stage seemed a bit Magnolia-ish (the movie, not the social bookmarking site) for my tastes. But with humor and obvious thoughtfulness he won me and the rest of the crowd over.

I really liked Jay Allen's solo performance, too, but Emily eventually convinced me that some of his points about the "invisible blogosphere" may be a bit suspect. But his overall point (there are lots of blogs our industry isn't aware of) was well-taken and excellently-presented. Also good: everyone on the panel moderated by Ted Rheingold, Ryan Carson's illuminating financial panel, the first of the two mapping panels and Treewave's mumbled but awfully-cool electronic art.

Life Of The Party: Yahoo!
Yahoo's been doing a lot of cool stuff in the past couple of years. The company acquired Flickr and del.icio.us and became relevant again overnight. Now they've got an excellent mapping product as well as the just-launched Pipes, a service that would charm even the most hard-hearted technologist. But judging by the generous party they threw and the fantastic swag they gave away at it (glowing icecubes!) the company still has a chip on its shoulder when it comes to everyone thinking the cool kids all work in Mountain View. Well, they needn't worry — although if that thirst for geek cred continues to translate into open bars and free t-shirts, I'll try not to be too reassuring toward them. There's only one thing tempering my gratefulness for their generosity: everyone I met from Yahoo looked healthy and well-rested. What kind of a tech company are they running over there?

Most Friendly: Technorati
I can't recall a party sponsorship and I didn't go to any panels with Technorati people on them, but the company had a sizable presence — their folks were everywhere, hanging out at parties, asking helpful questions in panels and exuding a sense of quiet excitement about what they do. Even better, everyone I met from the company was extremely nice.

Most Popular: Ze Frank
He seemed pretty accessible, too. Of all the inter-celebrities present (and not in hiding), he seemed to have the most star power. I'm not a big video podcast user — Kevin Rose and the MAKE crew left me a bit more star-struck — but Ze definitely attracted a crowd at the Yahoo party.

Most Like A High School Quarterback: Second Life
Okay, it may seem like a strained analogy, but hear me out. There's no question that Second Life continues to tower over Geek High — I heard questions that amounted to "when will life be like Snow Crash?" in at least three panels. But I increasingly get the sense that, like the aforementioned high school quarterback, SL's glory days may already be behind it. Second Life was mentioned in a lot of panels, but frequently either as an aside or in the context of a discussion of griefing or other problems with the online world. The experience seems unlikely to get dramatically better, and there's still no real application for it beyond showing how cutting-edge your company is (speaking of which, have you visited EchoDitto Island in SL yet?). Can it hack it in the pros, so to speak? Only if there's some kind of breakthrough. I didn't see much indication of that this year, despite listening to multiple panels with speakers from firms that are considered to be at the forefront of SL development.

Best Sponsorship: MAKE and CRAFT Magazine
These guys seemed to be everywhere, manning a trade show booth, sponsoring the Dorkbot presentation, delivering a keynote and making themselves available (particularly Bre Pettis, who I saw chatting with lots of folks). This may just be a bit of hero-worship on my part, though — I really like MAKE.

Best Trade Show Swag: Opera
Yahoo would win this, but all of their swag appeared at their party. Within the conference center Opera seemed to have the best stuff: t-shirts, pens and lanyards. Some folks seemed to like the US Army squeezable foam grenades, but most of us were just afraid of picking up a brochure and suddenly finding themselves writing CSS in Tikrit (paypal's squishy foam dollar signs made an acceptable substitute). I didn't realize it at the time, but apparently the Firefox folks were giving away t-shirts if you put a temporary tattoo on your face. The t-shirts looked good — maybe I'm giving them short shrift.