In the past year I’ve been migrating my twitter account into my facebook account. In that process twitter has expanded, rapidly, and has brought with it, it’s own set of rules and a bit of language. The @ symbols and the “RT” and the bit.ly’s and more.

Just this past week someone said to me,

Your facebook messages are so cryptic. What are all those numbers, letters, and symbols?

So, without creating a twitterictionary – because I’m sure that already exists, I will attempt to explain what these things mean. Especially so that later, you can refer to this post as a mini twitorial. (Upon further research, it does exist – it’s called Tiwtteronary.)

RT – stands for “ReTweet” it’s when someone you follow on twiter makes a statement that you really want others to see, or a link that is worth passing along, this is a RT.

bit.ly – a url shortening site, just like tinyurl. Twitter only allows users to post 140 characters, so that things will be kept short and sweet (tweet) – (I can’t help myself). With this 140 character limit you don’t want/need to post links that will steal all of those characters away. thus bit.ly and tinyurl.com

tweet- is a singular message sent through twitter by someone.

@- this is the call center for your twitter name. it’s how i differentiate someone’s real name, ie Jeremy Smith, and his twitter name @s1174430, as you can see a twitter name can be a collection of numbers (in his case a student id # from Cedarville days) or your actual name, like mine @kellycain.

When someone wants to speak “at” me through twitter, they will put @kellycain

Twitpic – this is a service that allows you to upload pictures and send them to twitter – sort of like a new version of photo bucket or webshots (wow, remember webshots?)

Tweetdeck, Tweetie, Twitterific- these are all 3rd party apps, that make twitter easy (and fun!) to use. Most of these can also be found on many phones.

DM’s- Direct Messages are a way to send links, messages, etc through twitter without the whole wide world seeing your thoughts.

Syncing with Facebook – the average facebook user changes their status through facebook, most twitter users, sync their twitter account with their Facebook account so that they don’t have to update in both places.

Twitter in Plan English – I have posted this before, but it’s too good not to post again.

Twitter in Plain English from 140.tw on Vimeo.

Why get on twitter? What’s the purpose? Honestly – it’s fun. It’s a way to stay connected with people. I find that I know when my friends are sick, pregnant, even when they are going to the store. I find out when new albums are coming out, when Zack Morris appears on the Jimmy Fallon show and much more.

Twitter is a way to find out useful and useless information in a fun way.

With that said, follow me on twitter. Tell them I sent you.

I have appreciated so very much the particpation of everyone here at blogference! I’ve had so much fun blogging and commenting with you guys! I’ve even twittered about it quite a bit using hashtags #blogference and #cccbf.

These conversations on social media have caused me to think differently about how I blog and how I utilize my blog. I definitely want to be a good steward of my readership and of my webspace.

I’ve been looking for articles and even had some of you send me some good ones. I follow Relevant Magazine on Twitter and just today they sent this article: Twitter: What’s It Doing to Us? that gives some really good insights on how 140 charaters just isn’t enough sometimes. Which discusses the negative affects of Twitter:

There’s also some fairly disturbing indications that this growing self-absorption may be dulling our society’s conscience. Researchers at the National Academy of Sciences have found that the lightning pace of media brought on by Facebook feeds and Twitter has made the average person increasingly indifferent to human suffering. Constant updates give us little time to reflect upon the information we’re receiving. The study found that humans have the capacity to sort information very quickly, but complex reactions like compassion or admiration take much longer to process. When we’re constantly inundated with tiny bits of information, we rarely take time to think or feel deeply about it.

As well as some of the positives,

But Twitter can also be an amazing tool for news and community. In fact, the use of Twitter last year during the deadly Mumbai siege helped to coordinate police and emergency response. Victims and bystanders of the attacks used Twitter to give real-time updates of the events as they unfolded, and the on-the-spot reporting it provided helped to hasten response.

Why should we be surprised? Most things can be used for good or for evil depending on how they are used.

It seems as if there is a bottom line that is surfacing among this research and in our themes across the board. Truly loving people, and truly caring about others can’t be replaced. After all Jesus gave us the real model for this. And as it says in 1 Thessalonians 3:12

May the Lord make your love increase and overflow for each other and for everyone else, just as ours does for you.

I found this website called, Church Marketing Sucks (sorry for the title – but it’s just what it’s called) and this is what they have to say on the topic of using social media:

Your church will never be great because you figure out how to use Facebook and Evites. Your church will be great because you commit yourself to living the gospel in a radical way, and you can use social media as a balanced part of that gospel-centered diet.

While I agree with what they’re saying, and to some degree I can see where they are coming from. After all church marquis signs are sometimes embarassing for those of us who are trying to not come across like those signs sometimes do. But can’t these marquis signs be an analogy for what our ministry says to people as they drive by or notice us? What do people notice about your ministry? What do they know about you? Do they think you’re an outdated student organization? Or do they think you have something worthy of their time?

We’ve seen the trends, we know that social media is it, it is NOW, and we as the Church must embrace it as one of the ways that we use to communicate God’s love and forgiveness.

There is no doubt that social media can be leveraged to reach more people, we as the Kingdom, have a task before us to figure out how to do that and how to do that well. Brian Barela, wrote this on his blogference post today,

I believe that there is someone out there with the ability to produce a culturally relevant, massively popular, viral action, evangelistic tool that could affect millions. Unless we as an organization die to this premium model philosophy in not only evangelism but in other areas as well (a great topic for the next blogference), we should not be surprised at our lackluster results in spite of a high investment of resources.

Just as we trust God that within a certain number of miles of every campus there are the resources to reach that campus, we need to trust God for tools that are relevant, that use social media, that would be viral and spread like (umm…) fireseeds throughout the world.

Or maybe the tools are already out there and there just needs to be someone, or a group of people, committed to looking for them. As I was thinking on this, I just thought of how this video my church did for it’s Christmas series, called “The Arrival” could be used to drum up conversation evangelistically, [rss feed readers video embedded]

“The Arrival” Intro from PC3 on Vimeo.

You could ask questions to follow up from this video like,

• What do you think is going on in this video?
• Why are some captivated by the door and some are not?
• Who do you think is knocking at the door? etc, etc….

I have a few questions for us to think on. Let’s get the ball rolling here…

• Are there any tools that you know of that are out there that you’ve used to share the gospel that could be shared through venues like Twitter, Facebook, etc effectively? If yes, what are they?
  
• Do you have any suggestions for how you can “use social media as a balanced part of a gospel-centered diet?”
• What do you think is the Church’s biggest barrier when it comes to using social media – lack of knowledge, lack of willingness, or something else altogether?
  
• How do you think Twitter, facebook, etc could be an amazing tool for community? How have you used it in your ministry to build community?
  

Thanks for all of your comments on if they blog it, will they come? and on an online movement?. I would love to keep this conversation going even though blogference 09 is drawing to a close. Be sure to follow me on Twitter.

Thank you for commenting on if you blog it, will they come?

I’d like to answer my own question from yesterday of how I’ve seen social media work.

• I’ve seen overstock.com ask for more followers on twitter to receive some gift cards.
• Mophie: a way to charge your iphone on the go – had a sweepstakes, to be automatically entered to win, just follow them on twitter
• Congo Cast: a project about the Congo, created a cause page on facebook, a website, and it’s own podcast
• Everystudent.com urges their local campus owners to advertise on facebook (a steal of a deal when it comes to dollars to hits) and have used youtube hand-in-hand with their site

So, there are no doubt, plenty of examples that could be listed. But, I can’t help but think – a blogference, without twitter! Crazy. Hey Brian, can we get a blogference twitter account?

I just read this idea of how to lead and interact well with “Gen F” the facebook generation. (Thanks Ken) and I can’t help but to agree a little bit, one of my favorite comments in the article was the 2nd principle among the 12:

2. Contribution counts for more than credentials.
When you post a video to YouTube, no one asks you if you went to film school. When you write a blog, no one cares whether you have a journalism degree. Position, title, and academic degrees—none of the usual status differentiators carry much weight online. On the Web, what counts is not your resume, but what you can contribute.

I think that’s why blogs work. Movements are started through the web – (uh oh, I most likely just struck a nerve among you Crusaders by mentioning the word “movement.”)

But think about it, a movement, by definition is “change of place or position or posture” which I find interesting because I think I just pictured movements with a very narrow view in years past.

I dug up some stats for us to see the reality of the social media movement and how it’s shifting our culture to become very connected through these outlets.

As I was reading an article about 2009 social media trends (by the pros), I found it interesting that some of the ways that they suggest corporations blog – is to be less corporate and more authentic, “to write openly and honestly about your industry.” And, if our industry is Christ (pardon the comparison), then we should write openly, authentically about our lives as Christ followers. We don’t have it all together – and we should be willing to share that through our blogs, twitter, myspace, and facebook accounts.

I don’t want to get to ahead of myself here, so, I’ll pose this question, in what ways could we use our communities (both online and in-person) to stop masking who we are and to live authentically (appropriately)? That is, if everyone knew someone who truly followed Christ, (even if that person was just someone they knew online -through blogs, twitter, etc)?

I wanted to initiate a first post to explain a little bit about who I am, and why I’m participating in such shaningans.

But, first, I must share with you this video that my church made to give people tours around our building today.

Easter Sunday “Informational Rap Video” from PC3 on Vimeo.
Okay, now that you’ve had a good laugh – or two, I’ll let you know who I am and why I’m here.

I’ve been blogging for a few years now (about 3) and things have changed a lot in those 3 years. I started out in blogger, even tried tumblr, but have landed on this wordpress blog for the past year or so.

I remember when facebook started, I hopped on twitter as soon as it was announced in an rss feed, and I just initiated myself into the world of LinkedIn. But these, just scratch the surface…there are so many others out there…

My senior year in college I wrote my thesis on “the internet and how it affects interpersonal relationships among college students” and that was a few years before facebook. It seems like since that time facebook, myspace,  ichat, skype, texting, blogging, twitter, youtube. vimeo and others have swept us all up into a whirlwind of fury. And if you look around, it’s not just for college students any more, it seems as if “everyone is doing it” these days.

Truth be told, social media is just starting, I think we’re just breaking through on applications and websites that will connect us, that is to say, we’re more connected than ever and yet, more disconnected than ever – and this is my topic for the next few days; How to utilize social media to bridge the gap, create a buzz, and basically make it work in your favor.

But, the way blogference works is not like a conference in that you go to a talk, listen to it and leave. Nor do we want you to come here and read a post – and then you’re done. Oh no, this requires your participation for it to work! So, everybody now – let us know who is reading, and who will be tracking over the next few days. Mention us on your blog, blog about the topic yourself, put us on your rss feed, twitter us, and let’s get this thing going in a true viral marketing way.

So I’ll start us off with a question, how have you seen social media work to virally (to spread like a virus) market something? anything? This could be for you personally, or for anyone that you’ve seen market an event, a band, a cause, etc… Tell us what they used, how the used it, and why you think it was effective (show us links). All forms of feedback are appreciated and welcomed – I urge you to be creative.