iamtrend: Taking Social Interest Groups Beyond Language Barriers

I’m a fan of alternative music. But to share that passion, I’m effectively limited in most social media to communicating with those who speak the same language as me. But the Thai startup iamtrend.com wants to connect like-minded folks across cultures and language barriers, giving them a social site where some simple tags and searches enable people to explore the kinds of ideas, photos, and videos that are shared by people with similar interests to yourself.

The iamtrend site is currently available in Thai and English, with more languages to be added by next week. The key to the cross-cultural sharing is, simply, in the preset tags that users can apply to their content, ensuring that when someone in, say, Bangkok applies the ‘alternative music’ tag to a Mogwai video, then I’m likely to stumble across it. Then I get the choice of retweeting or ‘liking’ it. Can you imaging retweeting content on Twitter that’s not in a language you understand? That just generally doesn’t happen. But that barrier is breached on iamtrend.

The site looks like a Pinterest clone at first glance – as founder Tareef Jafferi concedes when talking to us via email – but all that collating and easy searching does indeed make it an interesting community. Tareef explains:

Interest categories on the iamtrend website. Click to enlarge

From first inspection we may look like a Pinterest clone. However […] our core concept has always been about building a community of like-minded individuals. We provide a fun and engaging way to find new content and friends while also functioning as a social library – a place where you can store and organize things you love.

He adds that Southeast Asia has a wealth of tongues, but online it can all become “segmented by language and culture.” And so this might be a good way for regular folks – and “trendsetters” – to form interest groups.

Other available categories include education, food and drink, tech and science, travel, and lots more – plus lots of sub-categories within those (pictured above).

To gamify the whole community experience, iamtrend includes leaderboards so you can see who are the best people to follow on certain topics, lists for your own posts, virtual badges to represent your interests, as well as a social dashboard so you can track your own stats on the website.

iamtrend doesn’t yet have mobile apps (though that’s in the works right now), and accepts third-party Facebook login for faster access. Give it a try if you fancy the idea of a “social library.”