There are some very good applications for Christian social networks. I understand that parents, for instance, may want a safe social networking site for their kids to join rather than MySpace. If the network is faith-based, such as Tangle, we can assume that it will be safe and reinforce the values we hold and that we share with others on the site. There is a lot of value in something like this when it is done well. Though Tangle is basically a Christian MySpace, it executes its purpose extremely well. For this reason, I respect and support it.  It looks professional, has significant funding behind it, is very functional, and is a great place to find information and friends based on the topic of Christianity.

But you have to draw the line somewhere – and figure out where value and outright copying intersect. And when they do, stop what you are doing. Please.

I have never used Faithout.com – and I have no intention of doing so.  Sure, the developers are far more talented than I, being able to build a platform where people can connect and build community.  However, I don’t understand using those talents to put something together that – frankly – has already been done before (and done much better).  The title of the site reads “Christian Facebook Alternative”.  They have a sister site called Xians that is – you guessed it – a Faith-based MySpace.  A quick glance at the design is truly telling of how much of a copy it really is.  To the site’s credit – they don’t claim to be original.  However, that doesn’t make it right.

This raises some bigger questions from a ministry standpoint.  Are we really supposed to segregate ourselves from everyone else?  NO!  Yes, we need fellowship.  But must we commit and entire website to copying the largest social network in the world?  That seems to be one of the worst ways I can think of to represent Christians on the web.  “Look at those Chrisitans.  There they go, stealing our ideas again.  Oh well.  Guess we’ve come to expect it.”  Faithout has over 7,000 users (no telling how many are actually active).  So if you sign up for this service, and not others – just remember that there about 175 million more users on Facebook that you are missing out on connecting with.

I’m a strong believer in small groups in the literal sense.  Great churches thrive on community.  It’s how Jesus lived life with the disciples.  But Jesus didn’t go build his own ‘Chrisitan community’ to remove himself from the world.  He did however create small groups in the world that then influenced the world.  Why should social networking be any different?

I recently read/heard someone say that using social media should extend your existing business model, not change it.  This makes me think of the church – we meet a few times a week, but as the body, we go to work, go to school, go to sporting events – you name it, we do it.  Because we live in this world too.  We don’t only go to Christian sporting events because we’re scared of something we might see, or the people that might be at secular ones.  I think I’ve made my point.

Please, let’s use the heads on our shoulders to be creative.  Let’s influence.  Let’s take advantage of the HUGE networks that already exist and build community there.

I’m not saying that Christians should be doing this thing better that anyone else.  All people have gifts.  Let’s just let the people with the original idea, gifts, and enough funding be the people who do it.  Then let’s be a part of it.

Little did I know that there’s been a kid’s ministry hashtag (#kidmin) in use since February 3rd – and it’s been fairly widely adopted.  So why haven’t us student ministry people been using one?  Well, for one, it might be because of the method that we choose to update from.  With so many people using SMS to update their status these days, it becomes a chore to A) remember to use the hashtag and B) fit it in with the other content of our tweets.  Also, at one point should we use it and and what point should we not?  Just because we in one way or another work in student ministry doesn’t mean that all of our tweets should be labeled that way, does it?  Don’t get me wrong – I think it’d be great to aggregate all student ministry tweets.  The best possible would be just like Zappos does it, having people in student ministry submit their usernames to be included in the stream.  I don’t have the programming skills or time to set something like this up, but it would be great if someone out there did.

Until what I’ve just described happens, Josh, I, and several others have agreed on #StuMin, which keeps in line with #kidmin.  Spread the word in tweets worldwide!  Copy and paste the tweet below!  You’ll be able to track the use of this Twitter hashtag here or here.

RT @StudentMinistry: The people have spoken. Use #StuMin in your tweets about student ministry! Please RT! http://cli.gs/NvZa1P

• Relationships - not only is building relationships my favorite thing about it, it’s the most important thing.  If you’re primary concern is to determine ROI when developing your social media strategy, you might want to rethink joining the conversation at all.  Yes, there are trackable analytics, but social media is more about the customer having a voice than it is about your bottom line.  I love that many of the relationships I have experienced though our LifeWay Twitter account are now people I keep in contact with personally.
• Transparency – This idea has been around since AOL offered personal profiles to all of their users.  People and corporations are being more open and honest with people about who they really are.  And while some people might be dishonest to get attention, most people can see right through it.  When Threadless accidentally deleted five years worth of user blog posts (before they had dev servers – only one year ago, mind you), they were honest with their community about it.  Surprisingly, there was little negative feedback.  Not only did transparency help their reputation, but one of the people in the community wrote a script to recover all of the lost data.
• Feedback – Because the nature of social media is in fact social, people love to give input.  I’ve used feedback from people not only personally but in my work at LifeWay as well.  Twitter provides the quickest and easiest outlet to poll people, though this can be done effectively on blogs as well.
• Crowdsourcing – This falls in line with feedback, but is actually different.  While feedback gives you a response to your content, crowdsourcing is used to create content.  What kind of content?  Well, just about any kind.  From 99designs, where users submit designs to win prizes, to Get Satisfaction, where customer service is provided by consumers, it can be used for just about anything.  Crowdsourcing is a hot-button issue for a lot of people because it threatens their industry.  No longer does a company have to pay top dollar for services, because people are willing to work for just about anything.  I love crowdsourcing because it  shows the power of community – however, my support for it depends on why it is being used.
• News – It’s been said before – but social media is by far one of the quickest ways to get news.  I love that while I’m talking to people, and doing something I enjoy, and I can also hear about news from around the world.

What are your favorite things?

Sure enough, I pulled up GodTube.com today only to be redirected to Tangle, the new version of the site, including a redesign to go along with it.  The site now offers not only video sharing – but blogs, photos, music (band pages), playlists, and more.  It essence, it’s now a Christian version of MySpace.

I must admit, I’m always skeptical when Christians take ideas that have already been done well by someone else and make the faith-based.  However, if it’s going to be done, it must be done well.  And given the funding that the service received, it looks like they have put the time and resources into doing it well.  What do you think about it?

Regardless of our political views, I think web-savvy nerds everywhere can appreciate what President Obama is doing with his online presence.  While many people were impressed with BarackObama.com and Change.gov, there was some speculation over whether or not the beautiful look and feel would carry over to other official government sites.  Well, my friends, change has come WhiteHouse.gov, and it is a huge leap forward from what it was before.

Interestingly, Obama’s Director of New Media, Macon Phillips, introduced himself on the White House blog today.  Don’t quote me on this, but he may be the first person in history to hold this position.  If not, he is arguably the first person to do it effectively.

Not only can Obama’s websites hang with the best, but he uses social networking to connect with his supporters as well.  Most notably, he has over 3.8 million fans on Facebook at the time of this writing, as well as 144,000 followers on Twitter.  What’s interesting about his Twitter account is that he is following over 20,000 more people than follow him.  Of course, he will probably never actually view or update this account, but he is at least using his team to attempt to be more transparent, which I think younger generations will greatly appreciate.

He also uses YouTube as an outlet to share information with his supporters, and it appears to be working.  You can’t argue this with a user (especially a politician) who has over 20.5 million channel views.

You can find him on other prominent social media/networking sites including MySpace, LinkedIn, Flickr, Digg, and more at the bottom-right column of this page.

Of course, it remains to  be seen whether the majority of these accounts will be maintained or long forgotten.  Was all of this a ploy to gain votes?  Is he legitimately trying to connect government with a younger audience?  These questions cannot yet be answered.  

I think we can learn a lot from the new administration from a technological perspective in regards to our ministry.  It’s clear from the numbers I’ve shared that the web is important.  If President Obama gets it, then churches and pastors everywhere need to get it too.  Technology can lay the groundwork for an authentic relationship in the future.  And while most of us with never meet President Obama, technology can make people feel connected to what is going on, as if they are a part of it.  Face-to-face interaction is best, but for the times in between, the internet can help.  And in some cases, like President Obama, we may be able to connect with people that we don’t have the opportunity to meet face to face.

Let’s put our ‘party hats’ aside, and pat President Obama on the back for what he has accomplished online.  And then let’s take a few notes.

Let me introduce you to a nice little application called Twhirl.  This Mac and PC friendly program allows you to create a list of your Twitter accounts and login one-by-one.  Each account is shown in it’s own application window, and gives you the same functionality as the Twitter website, plus more.

Pros

• View direct messages, replies, favorites, and archive of your own tweets
• View friends and followers
• Follow other Twitter users
• Add tweets to favorites
• Use Twitter’s lookup feature (for usernames) as well as Twitter Search (for content in all tweets)
• Tweetscan Search
• Desktop notifications for new tweets
• Upload to TwitPic
• Shorten URLs (using one of  three different short URL providers)

Cons

• Can’t view multiple accounts in one window
• Lack of automatic brand mention tracking

While Twhirl is loaded with features,  I’m hesitant to commit because of the inability to handle multiple accounts from one window.  However, this is likely a great solution for many of you who don’t want to have a browser open at all times to manage your Twitter accounts.

Update:  You may also want to read How to Manage Multiple Twitter Accounts On Your Desktop

As someone who manages several Twitter accounts between work and my personal life, I was thrilled to come across Splitweet this week.  Splitweet is a website that allows you to  setup the credentials for each Twitter account you run to pull all of your Twitter feeds on to one page.  The tweets from all of your accounts appear in one stream. While this sounds like it might get confusing, the service assigns each of your accounts a different color.  To the far right of each tweet, there is a small box that is colored to coincide with the account that the tweet is associated with.  It uses the same feature to show you which accounts you sent each tweet from.

Just as if you were logged into Twitter, you can post tweets, send replies, and even direct messages across all of your accounts.

One thing I love about the site is the ‘brand mentions’ area in the sidebar. Rather than having to use TweetScan or visit Twitter Search, Splitweet displays any mention of your brand on the same page that you send and read your tweets from.  It displays your most recent @replies in the sidebar as well.

While I absolutely love how much easier Splitweet has made my life over the past few days, there is one major feature that keeps me going back to the Twitter website from time to time.

The site does not give you the ability to manage your followers.  Yes, there are sites that allow you to do this outside of Twitter – such as MyTweeple.com.  But the goal here is consolidation.  I don’t want to have to visit more than one site to manage my accounts (mainly because I’m lazy).  As a general rule, I try to follow everyone that follows me.  While Splitweet does show you an estimated ‘tweet audience’ when you choose which account to send a tweet to, there is no way to see your newest followers and follow them back.  So for my main LifeWay account, StudentMinistry, which gets a couple of new followers every day – I still have to visit Twitter to manage them.

In addition to Splitweet, this video by CHURSMO shows how you can use Netvibes to display all of your accounts on one page.  However, Splitweet offers more funcationality.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Overall, I give Splitweet 4 out of 5 stars.