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.

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.