The South by Southwest conference was supposed to be the coming out party for location-based services such as Foursquare and Gowalla. But, for whatever reason, it failed to really capture the imagination of the digital geeks.

Not surprisingly, the lack of enthusiasm has also meant the buzz about Foursquare, Gowalla and location-based services has been, at best, muted. My theory is that, for now, these services are novelties that come on and go. There is some chatter about Blippy or Swipely, and then it disappears.

The biggest problem is broadcasting your location isn’t enough to keep people coming back. After you’ve “check-in”, there needs to be more “meat” to keep people engaged and interested. The big question is whether Foursquare, et al will be able to attract people back for the next chapter when there is more content available. Given how fickle online users can be, it is difficult to get people to come back for a second look if they were less than impressed the first time around.

Another theory for lack of interest may be that people who would use location-based services already have their hands full with Facebook, Twitter, blogs and YouTube. As result, they don’t have the time or interest to get involved with yet another social media service.

While Compete.com is not a good barometer of how much traction that Foursquare and Gowalla are getting given both are mobile tools, both of them only have a modest of amount of traffic, which has slipped recently.

So, what’s your take on Foursquare, Gowalla and the located-based services market? Is it still early days or are they simply not finding a big enough audience?