Peter Gabriel and the “other” Big Blue Ball

As regular readers know, one of my busiest websites is BigBlueBall.com, a news and support site for instant messaging, social networks and other online collaboration tools. I registered BigBlueBall back in 1998 because I thought it was about as perfect a name as you could think up. It’s easy to say, to remember and spell. It’s adaptable to a wide range of topics. And it symbolizes our increasingly global community, collaboration and a “one world” view.

Four years ago (man, this blog has been around for a while!) I posted an in-depth explanation of how I came up with the BigBlueBall name and an anecdote about how one of my favorite musicians, Peter Gabriel, had (at the time) registered the .net and .org versions. I was curious to find out what his Real World record company would be doing with those domains, and now it’s clear. After more than 15 years in production, they’ve released (today!) Big Blue Ball, the album.

It’s fascinating to learn that Peter Gabriel had the same idea — Big Blue Ball symbolizing the global community and collaboration — with a similar inspiration; the astronaut’s view of Earth from space.

You can listen to some samples or get DRM-free MP3s below:

Enjoy!