Are web sites obsolete?

As I have been working on a web site for my church, I have started to wonder if the whole idea of having an all-encompassing web site is becoming obsolete. It seems that all the effort going into designing, developing, and maintaining a web site is a tremendous amount of work that must be re-done every two or three years. And now, with the advent of XML, where the form and content have been separated (see this video for a good explanation of what I am talking about), it seems that we should instead separate content creation from web site design.

What I mean is this: for each type of content we want to make available, we should find the appropriate tool and use it. Then we should allow those who are consuming our content to view it in any way that they would like. For example, for a church calendar, use Google calendar (my personal favorite) to manage the calendar and then make it “public”, which allows someone to integrate it into their personal calendar, bring it in to their “home page” via an RSS reader, or just view it directly.

Or take another example: each ministry wants the ability to communicate with their members. A youth pastor could use a blog as a way to keep his youth group up to date on what is going on in the ministry, complete with photos (linked from Flickr) and videos (from YouTube). The members of his group could keep up to date by subscribing to the blog via email, importing it into their Facebook profile, or just viewing the blog directly.

OK, you say, this is all fine and good, but we still need a web site! Well, yes, you do need something that is a place with your basic information and a place to direct search engines, but it should really be an aggregation of all these other tools.

One key to successful web ministry is a distributed model of updating. By allowing each ministry to update their own information, you will get the most dynamic web site possible. But the challenge to this then becomes: how do you change the culture within your organization so that each ministry is willing to do this kind of updating?

So do you agree or disagree? Could a church (or other parachurch or nonprofit) have a successful web ministry without a full-fledged web site? Or am I going out of my mind?

Crowdsourcing

Computerworld recently ran a cover page story on how businesses are using crowdsourcing to more quickly develop products and get feedback from target groups. Crowdsourcing is a method of using the Internet to allow multitudes of people to quickly give input to your organization via Internet-based software tools. Crowdsourcing can be used to get input from your customers on products, to do brainstorming from a larger group of people, or to simply increase customer loyalty by giving them a place where they can feel a part of your company. In a separate article written a couple of months ago, it is put this way:

Also compelling is the increasingly popular notion among companies desperate to stay competitive that the best, most direct and possibly cheapest sources of innovation lie outside the corporate walls, among customers and other previously hidden sources of talent.

One example of crowdsourcing given is Dell’s Ideastorm, where people can suggest ideas and then promote or demote the ideas. Dell examines the most popular ideas and, in some cases, implements them!

So how can this be used in Internet ministry? Would your church or organization have enough guts to give people the ability to give you suggestions? Would you be willing to think “outside the box” sometimes? Is there anyone doing this?

Lifecasting:

Lifecasting is the practice of making your whole life available via the Internet. This used to be done by attaching a camera to your PC and then uploading everything to the Internet as it happens. A somewhat newer trend is using a cellphone video camera. By having the camera on a mobile device, people can now truly take the camera everywhere and broadcast everything that happens. But are people really doing this? Yes: check out qik.com to see what people are showing.

Just as cellphone cameras have made the availability of pictures from any event available (no matter how obscure, unplanned, or accidental), now cellphone video cameras have done the same for video. David Brin wrote of the Transparent Society and I believe that his vision is coming to be. In his book, he envisioned that all parts of public life would be recorded and used to enhance public safety (as well as to allow us to do things like check on our children, preview traffic conditions, etc.). While he didn’t necessarily include the idea of mobile phones and the Internet as part of this, what is happening today is eerily close to what he foresaw.  One of the overarching ideas in his book is that we are much better off in a world where the public has control over the cameras than  where the government has control.

Let’s look at this from a ministry perspective now. How can lifecasting be used to promote Jesus? How can it be used to encourage people to come to our churches or participate in our organizations? I’m not sure. If we live streamed our services and events? If we hooked up our pastors 24/7 to a camera?! I’m not sure if I want to know what anyone is doing all the time; and I sure do not want everyone to know what I am doing all the time! What do you think?

Second Life as practice for real life?

Interesting article in the OC Register today. The article discusses how a researcher at UCI is using Second Life as a virtual “testing ground” for software that controls a rapid transit system. She is able to use Second Life to simulate something that will eventually be used in real life. I previously mentioned in this blog that Christians should be in Second Life as both a way to reach others who are there as well as for the experience of using virtual worlds for spreading the gospel. This story made wonder if it would also work the other way: can we use Second Life as a way to “test out” different methods of our work (marketing projects, youth activities, acts of charity, etc.) that can then translate back into the real world? I’m not sure, but there may be certain circumstances where this may be profitable.

Should churches be in Second Life?

I have visited the topic of the virtual world Second Life before, and I am still planning on incorporating into my research on the use of Internet by the Church. One use of Second Life that I have been following particularly is that of the Anglican Church. According to the Church Advertising Network:

“The Anglican Cathedral on Epiphany Island was built to support the Anglican Group in Second Life, which was founded in November 2006 by Bill Sowers, who is a member of St David’s Episcopal Church in the Diocese of Kansas.“

The services are led by Mark Brown, who is licensed as Deacons Assistant by the Bishop of Wellington in New Zealand. You can see a video of their first service here. Mark also has written a good article on ministry using web 2.0 tools that complements much of what has been written in this blog.

The title “Should churches be in Second Life?” was prompted by the latest entry in Mark Brown’s blog. It seems that the web site Anglicans Online has taken issue with doing church in Second Life, comparing it to the phenomenon of televangelists in the US. They raise issues with how “real” Second Life experiences can be (also raised by me in response to LifeChurch’s SL presence). The overall tone of the article is that Second Life is at the very least not important and at the very most to be avoided altogether.

I disagree. As a church, we need to go where the people are – and there are people in Second Life. I demonstrated SL to my MIS class last week and someone asked me what I thought it would look like in several years. I said that I didn’t know whether SL would even be around in a few years, comparing it to the experience of old BBS services that were the precursor to today’s social networks. But something will be around in a few years, and the more we understand about how to be effective in Second Life now, the better we can minister in that new environment. Mark Brown, as you might expect, also disagrees; read his well thought response here.

Other Christian ministries have also begun using Second Life. Besides previously blogged about LifeChurch, the Church Advertising Network has created an online town modeled after “Bible Times”, where you can explore and find answers to questions about the Christian faith. Now that’s creative.

China and web 2.0

A new report on how the Chinese are embracing web 2.0 gives me ideas on new strategies for reaching this mission field (hat tip to Sampsung @ HiLaws). According to the report, Chinese Internet users are much more likely to use user-generated content to make purchasing decisions than Americans (58% to 19%).  They are also much more likely to post comments to blogs and are younger than those in the US. To me, this points to a trust issue: the Internet users their trust each other more than those here. It could also possibly point to a distrust of corporate web sites as well. If we want to reach these users, we should understand this. Tools such as Facebook, MySpace, SecondLife, and others should not be foreign to those trying to reach the next generation of Chinese…or Americans, for that matter. Missionaries should not create new web sites but, instead, learn how to get involved in the spaces where the people already are.

But are any missions organizations giving this a focus? I honestly don’t know…but I’ll find out!

Taking it seriously…

MSNBC is reporting a story about a girl who killed herself over what someone else wrote about her on MySpace. While this is disturbing in itself, it forced me to think about how seriously some people take their online persona. Whether it’s Facebook, MySpace, or some type of message board, these are public places of a sort that are meaningful to their users.

Many in the Church are hesitant to get involved in these types of environments because they have heard stories of the unsavory things that go on. They can point to stories such as this as an example of the bad things that can happen there. But yet…just think what a difference someone could have made by making a positive impact on this girl. The youth pastor at our church was at first reluctant to go into MySpace to reach the high schoolers at our church. After we discussed it, he decided to jump in and give it a try. He now tells me that it is a key part of his ministry.

We cannot be scared to go where the people are. If they are in MySpace, go there. If they are in Samaria, go there. If they are in Facebook, go there. If they are Gentiles, go there. If they are in Second Life, go there.  We must not be afraid to find people where they are.

Web 2.0 Backlash

Is it just me, or is there more and more disillusionment with web 2.0? It seems like everywhere I look now, there are articles on how you can’t have real relationships with facebook, or how blogging is no longer the “in” thing? Here are a couple posts I’ve just noticed lately…
What do you think? Is the tide turning on the web 2.0 hype?

Building relationships by NOT building another online social network

I have been discussing how ministries should put their values into their web site. Our church, for example, values relationships. But how to show that online? In previous posts I suggested that blogs are useful way to build relationships, especially if comments are allowed. I also described how a church in Chilliwack, Canada, focused their web site on community.

When trying to develop a web site that is relational, many organizations automatically think they should build their own online social network. I am an alumni of three different universities, and all three of them have tried to get me to join their social network. Even a high school I attended wants me to link up.

In the physical world we don’t do this, so think of it this way…if you had a group of friends that you wanted to meet with regularly, you wouldn’t go build a coffeehouse. You would instead find a suitable place (such as a Starbucks, It’s a Grind, Denny’s, etc.) and arrange to meet there. In fact, many times meeting in a more public space allows you to be seen by others and attracts them to your organization. So why would an organization go through the expense of building their own social network when there are already several good social network sites out there? And if you have a ministry that wants to reach out to others around you, what better way to do it than to make your group visible to the public? Sites such as Facebook already provide tools for you to integrate your group into their site – so use them!

What do you think? Does your organization use Facebook or another social network site? Or are you contemplating building your own?

Blogging tips

Over at the LifeChurch blog this week, Bobby and Craig have just finished up a series on tips and techniques for blogging.  This is good stuff and I will definitely take some of their advice.  I generally find that blogging takes me a lot longer than I expect – I sit down to write something and thirty minutes later I am still on the first paragraph rewriting it for the third time.  I am trying to get back to regular blogging and I think that their ideas will help.

One of their posts was called “Why Blog?” and I think it gives an insight into how technology can be relational.  This is something of great interest to me because I am in the middle of helping our church “re-create” their web presence strategy.  As I work through this process, I am beginning to understand the importance of how a web presence communicates the values of the church.  One of the key values of my church is “relationships”.  Blogging is one of the key ways that a web presence can build relationships IF it is done correctly.  The tone of the blog, allowing comments, and interacting with other bloggers is one big way to be relational online.

What other ways can a web presence be relational? I’ll post more on this next time.