According to Malcolm Gladwell, the social theorist and best selling author of the seminal work, The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference, “the success of any kind of social epidemic is heavily dependent on the involvement of people with a particular and rare set of social gifts.”
There are the Salesman, there are the Mavens, and then there are the Connectors who comprise “a handful of people with a truly extraordinary knack [… for] making friends and acquaintances.” In Seattle social and digital media circles, especially those spheres related to digital television and broadcast media, Andrew Thornhill owns the designation of industry “Connector,” bordering on a kind of personification most resembling a human hyperlink. (Within two weeks of our first meeting, Andrew was hosting me on a nationally-syndicated radio show, connecting my own digital story with an untold number of listeners across America. Such is the modus operandi of “The Connector.”)
Gladwell goes on to attribute the social success of Connectors to “their ability to span many different worlds [… as] a function of something intrinsic to their personality, some combination of curiosity, self-confidence, sociability, and energy.”
The analogy abounds in the case of Thornhill, who is a self-affirmed digital video analyst while he is also the entrepreneur and curator behind a concept known as Digital Storytelling, wherein he advises entrenched media how to break out of the confines they occupy in their traditional business models and leverage the full-spectrum they have inherited on the Internet. It’s all in a day’s work for this infopreneur who is also connecting four American cities in his professional network: Seattle, Pittsburgh, Miami and San Diego, the four corners of the terrestrial landmap.
Thornhill’s career centers on video production and distribution but has transcended everything from Internet branding strategies to the aesthetic superiorities of a floral species: the Rose. The good news for this Connector it that, like the rose, it appears his time has come into full bloom.
A new breed of Internet-enabled digital programming services is bursting on the digital television scene with names like Roku, Boxee, Apple TV and programmers like MediaFly, Revision3 and TWIT. Thornhill is well positioned to help companies migrate their content to these outlets and earn the new stature that is waiting to be claimed as corporate television programmers.
Andrew explains: Like the era of RSS-syndicated blogs before it, we are entering an era where videocasting is both a “lean-forward” medium on the personal computer and personal media devices, aka tablet computers like the iPad, and the “lean back” infotainment experience of the living room digital television, be it delivered by network TV providers or from content syndicators via consoles like the Roku, Xbox or Nintendo Wii. Internet enabled, standalone TV boxes mean new “box office” for any corporate interest to open up their own television channel online. And if they miss this train at the station, they may be left well behind while their competitors become high-speed rail cybercasters.
For those who are ready to connect across the threshold from the digital Web to the digital television content marketplace, a Connector like Andrew Thornhill is right on time . He can be reached at [email protected]. [24×7]
