I made a friend online today. It happens to me most every day. Tyrone lives in Cape Town South Africa.
The first time I came across Tyrone in the indie while you work room at turntable.fm, he was chatting up a couple Japanese DJs.
I loved that exchange so much that I tumbld it. It speaks to the notion that music is the international language.
I saw Tyrone in the Indie While You Work room again today. We got to talking while taking turns listening and playing music. He said he loves the AVC blog. So I asked him what I should write about today:
Tyrone didn't mean "not getting into Tumblr", he actually meant "not getting into Turntable.fm." That's because Turntable.fm had to turn off international users last weekend due to licensing issues. Tyrone had been chatting about how big of an impact that had on him earlier in our chat.
But Tyrone is right about "the whole geography thing." I wrote a post about this over the weekend and our very own Arnold Waldstein said this:
To me the big change is that socialization is now possible on a global real-time scale. This is not a technological revolution, but a social and behavioral one.
That flattening is a ramp for cultures to meet and communicate over cross cultural, uni-behavioral drives like music or sw development or celebrity obsessions or just passion points like wine or art or even, in my work, marketing.
The power for communities and businesses is not for cultural niches but for global populated communities around more specific points on the interest graph with huge possible memberships that span the cultural and geographical divide
Whether it is Tyrone chatting up a couple of Japanese DJs or talking to me about what to blog about, "socialization on a global real-time scale" is a big deal.
I follow @masason on Twitter. Here's one of his tweets:
I don't understand all of this tweet, but I know who he is talking to/about and I can click on the picture and that tells me most of what this tweet is about. I can stay connected to @masason at some level via Twitter even though I don't understand the words in his tweets.
I followed Tyrone's Tumblr this morning. Now every time he tumbls something, it will appear in my dashboard. We stay connected even though we live half way around the world from each other. I hope turntable can get licensed internationally because Tyrone also is a great DJ and I love getting turned onto new music by him. Content licensing issues are certainly one of the few remaining hurdles in our increasingly global, social, and mobile web. I'm optimistic that we'll see these hurdles come down soon because the power of this global network is large and getting larger every day. Content owners should want to tap into it as much as individuals like me, Tyrone, and Masa Son.
