No one would have bet on this, but by all accounts, yesterday's SXSW keynote by Twitter CEO Ev Williams flopped. Louis Gray sums up what happened succinctly: After thousands of Twittering geeks and quasi-geeks alike had settled in to the packed exhibition hall and overflow rooms to hear the latest updates delivered straight from Twitter's leader, their excitement soon turned to boredom and finally, severe annoyance, as the interview's pace, tone and content fell well below expectations . After an hour's time, the halls in Austin were more than half empty, and an opportunity to showcase one of technology's biggest successes in the last few decades was for the most part lost.

That won’t be the fate of the iPad as it comes to market at just the right time, providing a marvelous new outlet for content marketers to capture the increasingly mobile digital generation that now includes most of us. And, since the days of portable cassette players and the Sony Discman, we also want to take our entertainment with us as well. Apple: A Powerful, Portable, Flexible, Connected, Social, and Cool Information and Entertainment Device for the 21st Century Once Again, Steve Jobs Gets His Timing Just About Right with the iPad.

All forms of social media, from networks like Facebook and Twitter to online video and blogging, have given "the people formerly known as the audience" a series of microphones and platforms of their own, and they're using them. Who shares: Once upon a time, only three people controlled what was shared outside the meeting room: The organizer, the speaker and any journalists who were covering the session. Who listens: Listening in doesn't require being in the room anymore, thanks to the backchannel on Twitter and similar sites. Public speaking comes with a lot of assumptions baked into it--forms, formats and formalities that have been used over and over again for centuries.