Attention has also been focused on Blackberry's private messaging service, known as BBM. London tech and media specialist Jonathan Akwue wrote a post on his blog outlining the case for Blackberry as the messaging vector of choice for the rioters.

Two Scottish teenagers are due to appear in court over messages posted to their Facebook accounts allegedly encouraging rioting.

Our community manager Robyn Tippins has posted the first in a series called "The Big Question." She asked, "What effect does social media on the Web have on social unrest in the real world?" And you answered.

Blackberry hacked for allegedly cooperating with London police. Research in Motion's Inside Blackberry blog was hacked on Tuesday by a group calling itself TeaMp0isoN_. They left a message behind, saying, in part, "You Will _NOT_ assist the UK Police because if u do innocent members of the public who were at the wrong place at the wrong time and owned a blackberry will get charged for no reason at all."

Anonymous vs. Facebook. Claiming that "Facebook has been selling information to governments agencies and giving clandestine access to information security firms," the hacktivist collective has threatened to "destroy Facebook" on November 5th. So, there's that. As Dan Rowinski points out in his article, that's easier said than done. The Syrian Ministry of Defense is one thing, but Facebook quite another entirely.

Turkey backs away from online censorship plans. "A plan to require Turkish Internet users to choose one of four state-mandated browsing filters starting this month has been scrapped," according to the Wall Street Journal. Instead, the government will offer two filters (Child and Family) on an opt-in basis. Otherwise, the Internet is to remain free. A cause for celebration.

Anonymous hacks the Syrian Defense Ministry Website. The Ministry of Defense, which oversees many of the personnel who have contributed to 1,700 civilian deaths during Syria's five month-long Arab Spring protests, was hacked. Anonymous left behind their logo and a note. The note said, among other things, "The world stands with you against the brutal regime of Bashar Al-Assad. Know that time and history are on your side - tyrants use violence because they have nothing else, and the more violent they are, the more fragile they become."

7% of Arab bloggers arrested. Berkman Center and Global Voices released a study asserting that 7% of Arab bloggers have been detained by police and security forces within the last year and 30% threatened. The sample was admittedly small, however, consisting of the approximately 100 Arab bloggers aggregated by Global Voices, 80% of whom blog in English.

Moroccan activist blog attacked. Mamfakinch was the victim of a DDoS attack. It appears back up at this point. Mamfakinch's co-founder, Lbadikho, contributed to our status report on the Arab Spring.

Hungary passes religious-based censorship law. Hungary has passed a law that is a kind of de facto ban on many religious denominations. Under the law, only 14 of the nearly 400 formerly-recognized religious groups retain official status. The rest must apply for reinstatement. Budgetary funds for charitable work are now withheld from those groups.

Trial of Zimbabwean Facebook user delayed. Vikas Mavhudzi was arrested arrested in March for commenting on opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai's Facebook page, saying Egypt, in revolt at the time, was "sending shockwaves to dictators around the world." One of those dictators, the tinhorn president of Zimbabwe Robert Mugabi, made Mavhudzi the first Facebook user to be arrested in the southern African country.

His trial, which was supposed to begin last Friday, was delayed until August 25th, when it was discovered that "the State failed to access the message after it apparently appeared Mavhudzi's Internet account expired after the cellphone was confiscated by police in February. Jamela and Chanayiwa also notified the State that their client would not help the State in any way to access the message arguing it would be tantamount to Mavhudzi incriminating himself."

Clapham photo by George Rex, Esna photo by Ed Yourdon

The Pope pushed the site live and tweeted about it using an iPad. The site itself is the first time the Vatican has provided a single place for all the news and opinion surrounding the Church, the Vatican state and the Pope.

The tweet read:

"Dear Friends, I just launched News.va Praised be our Lord Jesus Christ! With my prayers and blessings, Benedictus XVI"

The Twitter account is clearly not the 84-year-old pontiff's. It belongs to the Vatican's news department. Although it would be something to watch Benedict go nuts tweeting troubles with his alb and joy at his caprese, it seems unlikely.

The site, News.va, aggregates not just the press releases, messages and internal reporting, including newspaper and radio, in the city-state, but also the various social media accounts run by the Vatican. In addition to Twitter, these include Facebook, YouTube and Flickr.

The New York Times reports:

"Benedict has been bedeviled by communications woes during much of his six-year papacy, much of it the fault of a large Vatican bureaucracy that doesn't always communicate well internally. Officials hope the new portal, while mostly designed to provide Vatican news in an easy-to-use setting to the outside world, might also improve the Vatican's own internal communications by sharing information."

It is already several generations ahead of, say, the Vatican Information Service website, in readability and functionality. With the Pope's endorsement, News.va may prove to be an inspiration for the rest of the Holy See's electronic communications.

Alex Riley, in his documentary, "Secrets of the Superbrands," set out to figure out "how (the world's most powerful technology) brands - such as Apple, Microsoft and Google - have grown so explosively to become some of the world's biggest companies."

"The scenes I witnessed at the opening of the new Apple store in London's Covent Garden were more like an evangelical prayer meeting than a chance to buy a phone or a laptop. The strangeness began a couple of hours before the doors opened to the public. Inside the store, glassy-eyed staff were whipped up into a frenzy of excitement, jumping up and down, clapping and shouting."

If this doesn't bother you, well, maybe it should.

Apart from what Riley has to say about the topic, and that topic includes sex and gossip, what the religion element reminded me of was the transition from the Roman Republic to the Empire.

(Hey, where'd everybody go?)

Anyway, the public (well, at least the free, male, moneyed public) that took such a hands-on role in shaping the policy of the Republic was displaced by an Imperial government that consolidated power in one man, whose will was carried out by a bureaucracy. When that happened, the formerly most influential elements of the society turned away from public life to "mystery religions": Mithraism, the worship of Isis and of course Christianity.

In the same way, it feels that we've lost something in turn. I'm not sure what it is - religious faith, political will, tribal affiliation? - but I can feel it. With the loss of that thing, people have turned to brands, particularly to tech brands, with their promise of connection, amplification, justification, belonging. The promise of salvation and relevance.

I'm not a cynic when it comes to tech. I could hardly be here, doing this, if I were. I get embarrassingly enthusiastic when somebody comes along and punks up some crazy tech doodad or process that lets us, say, discover 17 new pyramids or cheat the switches on the machinery of repression.

But I am a skeptic. If I had to sum up my philosophy in one sentence it would be this:

The unexamined tech is not worth using.

So if an influential minority of us is responding to Apple or Google or Microsoft as though they were gods, we need to put on the brakes, reinforce our skepticism and examine the tech we use before it winds up using us.

Crowd photo by pwnEd375 | other sources: CNN

The Web has responded to this with its typical enthusiasm, combining the snackbar wisdom of the hipster with the maudlin goop of the true believer.

My take on this is that it is not a religious thing. It is an idiot thing. But whatever, here's some stuff.

In the U.S., the rapture is the number one search trend on Google, followed by oxycodone. The third, fifth and seventh highest-ranking trends are also related to this particular imaginary event. (With the Mayan cycle misunderstood as an apocalypse thrown in there at #8).

#iftheworldendsonsaturday is the second-highest trending topic on Twitter worldwide.

On their blog, Hitwise Experian outlined some of the traffic trends created by interest in this date.

"Camping's predictions have caused the market share of daily visits to Family Radio to jump 215% for Tuesday, May 17th as compared to Tuesday, April 19th and ranked 13th among websites within the Lifestyles - Religion category, up from 56th one month ago. On Tuesday, 66% of visitors to Family Radio were new to the website or had not visited in the past 30 days."

Others getting boosts from Camping's cynical gibberish are eBibleFellowship and (hrmm?) The Huffington Post.

Other online points of interest are Plancast where "Post-Rapture Looting" meetups are planned, and Facebook, where it has its own page (And is a band.)

As far as I'm concerned, life is so fragile and precious that Mr. Camping's species of intellectual and spiritual shabbiness is no less than an affront to God (or the dignity of Man if you prefer). Were I a less Christian man, I would suggest each and every person who sees Mr. Camping on Sunday give him a shot in the chops. But I supposed I'd have to recommend you all sock each other in the face as well, for being glib and adding to the overall baseness of our discourse. And to be honest, I'm going hiking on Sunday.

Incidentally, according to Isaac Newton, widely acknowledged to be one of the greatest minds in history, the End will begin no earlier than 2060. So, if you're a believer in the rapture, you have to ask yourself who you'd rather follow: one of the greatest mathematicians to ever live, or some knucklehead who couldn't get his math right the first time.

Missa est.

Bridge photo by Luz Villa

Its latest move, however, goes far beyond the pale of common sense. It has passed a resolution outlawing "defamation" of religion. That means that wherever U.N. writ runs, neither a person nor an organization nor a representative of the press may say anything negative about a religion, part of a religion, an offshoot of a religion or a representative or member of a religion.

If you believe, as the United Nations allegedly does, that free speech is not a political right but a human right, you will be horrified by this.

"Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers."

If you're all for limits on speech that you dislike, you would do well to remember that this type of resolution is a textbook case of "slippery slope." If you can do it to someone you hate, it takes only a slight tip of the scale for them to do it to you.

Pakistan has shut off the web out of fear it will see a picture of Mohammed. Either out of fear of Everybody Draw Mohammed Day, or using that event as an excuse, the Pakistani government has blocked the following at least: Facebook, Flickr, Wikipedia, and YouTube. Apparently Twitter is still partially functional, but blocked in certain parts of the country. I imagine it will be banned everywhere in short order. Everybody Draw Mohammed day started as a joke in a cartoon, which the cartoonist backed down from, but others went forward with. It is supposedly a celebration of free speech. It has purportedly drawn a lot of outright racist crap, but I suppose that's what makes it free speech as opposed to sanctioned speech. Many Pakistanis are outraged more at the censorship than at any possible blasphemy. I guess they figure that they, and their faith, are proof against the deadly power of amateur cartooning. Maybe the government should take a page from their book instead of tear pages out of the Koran to cover themselves with.

Tunisian citizens protest online crackdown. Thousands of Tunisians joined an online anti-censorship campaign, posting on Facebook, Twitter and blogs and posting photos and videos on the topic. "Even some radio and TV shows slipped a word about it, which is a first: The silent crowd is not so silent anymore." Tomorrow, organizers are taking the protest offline in cities around the world, including Tunis.

Tunisia blocks Skype. (This from an email from ReadWriteWeb France editor, Fabrice Epelboin.) Possibly in relationship to the anti-censorship activities above, Tunisia has blocked the VOIP site, though not others.

Facebook refuses to remove Holocaust denial groups. Facebook has refused to ban holocaust denier groups from using its service. That seems odd and a breaking of its terms of service, but is a private company and has the right to decide what it does. It can also be boycotted by users if they do not respond to what those users want. If people can force Facebook's hand, good I suppose. Talk of suing Facebook seems off-base though.

Thailand attacks protesters. Thailand sent in the army to break up the camp of the Red Shirt protesters, many of whom use electronic media to present their case against the current government. Several of the leaders surrendered to avoid more bloodshed.

Internet unblocked in Uighur area but webmasters and bloggers remain in jail. After being shut down or blocked for almost a year, China has apparently unblocked Internet access in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region of China. The webmasters, bloggers and journalists arrested in the crackdown of July 2009, however, remain jailed. These include "Memet Turghun Abdulla, a photographer who published an article online about an attack on Uyghur factory workers believed to have sparked the July 2009 unrest; Gheyret Niyaz, a journalist who was detained after talking to foreign media about the unrest; Dilshat Parhat, who co-founded the Uyghur-run website Diyarim; Obulkasim, an employee of Diyarim; Nureli, who founded the Uyghur website Selkin; and website supervisor Muhemmet."

Vietnam upholds sentences against blogger, other dissidents. Nguyen Tien Trung, a blogger and computer technician, did not appeal his sentence. He's jailed for speaking out against the regime. The court upheld attorney and businessman Le Cong Dinh's five-year sentence and businessman Tran Huynh Duy Thuc's 16-year sentence. The five-year term of Le Thang Long was reduce to three-and-a-half after he "admitted" his guilt.

Top photo by Arthit Suriyawongkul.

I swear, this isn't a bad joke. It's a very real site, ChurchRater, and it allows anyone with an Internet connection to identify and review church services around the world. Is the site inspiring frank conversations about worship and religion, as its creators intended? Is it allowing sometimes closed or cliqueish communities to see how they appear to outsiders? Or does it, as some users wrote, "trivialize the deep dimensions of spiritual experiences" and "bolster the notion that church is a consumer-oriented proposition"?

The website now allows any user to essentially replicate that feedback process.

Here's how it works: Users create a profile (what, no Facebook Connect option?) and then have the options of searching for churches, reading reviews and posting reviews and ratings of their own. Churches can also request to be rated, in which case a reviewer is hired and sent to review that church.

Right now, only Christian denominations are included on the site (Catholic and Protestant); the co-founders have stated they do not intend to add mosques, synagogues or other places of worship to their system. And most of the reviews are for churches inside the U.S. Still, if you've ever had the unique experience of living in or around any of the American Protestant subcultures, you know there's some darn good fodder for reviews there.

Many of the churches in the site's database remain unreviewed. The review threads that exist, however, range from informative to entertaining. One well-known megachurch was criticized for its emphasis on showmanship. Another large church was given a terrible review for its unwelcoming congregation and self-important preacher. One pastor got smacked down for giving his own church a five-star rating.

As interesting and even useful as such reviews can be, however, some of the site's users take umbrage at its purpose and execution.

"We live in a world where 1.1 billion people lack access to clean water, over three billion people live in poverty, and children of God are sold into slavery; we have no time to waste rating 'Sunday shows,'" one wrote.

"By providing such an open forum," wrote another, "dirty laundry can be aired (in fact, IS aired) with no means of proving its truthfulness; as such, you become accessories, in all likelihood, to the bearing of false witness, even slander."

Still, as a young person who was subjected to an unrelenting Baptist upbringing as well as constant coast-to-coast travel, I can see the value in having such a site. For discriminating church-goers who are looking for a new church home, it's good to have firsthand and honest feedback on exactly what a given worship service will entail.

Besides, churchgoers are already "reviewing" churches informally and offline, anyhow. Why not bring these conversations into the light?

Let us know what you think in the comments.

The occasion was the 44th annual World Communications Day, traditionally a time for the Vatican to project an annual message from the church to its people and the rest of the world. This year's message stood in sharp contrast to the missive he delivered in 2009, when the Holy See stated that mass media - including online information sources - acted as a "poison" that numbed morality and sensitivity. "'It recounts, repeats and amplifies evil," he said, "making us accustomed to horrendous acts, desensitizing us and, in some ways, poisoning us." So, why the about-face?

In contrast to the popular conceptions of church leaders and religious figures as being out of touch, the Holy Father urged priests to express their message not as a relic or a theory but as something "concrete, present and engaging...

"Consecrated men and women working in the media have a special responsibility for opening the door to new forms of encounter, maintaining the quality of human interaction, and showing concern for individuals and their genuine spiritual needs."

In essence, the Catholic Church is beginning to sound like some of the clients of digital ad agencies during and after the dot-com boom. While we wouldn't dare condense the Pope's message down to "we gotta get us some of that-there Internet," we do feel that this call to online action is a bit late and a bit out of step with last year's World Communications Day message.

In 2009, Pope Benedict gave an address on new technologies that seemed like a two-sided coin where the Web was concerned.

While applauding the ability of "so-called cyberspace" to foster dialog between diverse and geographically distant people, the Pope continued to say that the social web trivialized the concept of friendship and might contain words and images that "are degrading of human beings, that promote hatred and intolerance, that debase the goodness and intimacy of human sexuality or that exploit the weak and vulnerable."

None of these notes were present in this year's message, which called for a strong pastoral presence online and positioned the social Web as a tool of the ministry rather than a dangerous frontier of questionable content from which to protect laypersons.

What do you think: Should the Church be more visible online? How does the Holy See's position effect priests and other church leaders on the ground, many of whom have taken to the Web already to enhance their outreach and ministry? And why do you think the Pope's message is so encouraging about using the Internet as opposed to last year's cautionary tale? Let us know your opinions in the comments.

The Pope celebrated the World Day of Communications on Friday with a statement calling social networking sites like Facebook and MySpace "a gift" that could speak to the "fundamental desire" we all have to connect, so long as people don't isolate themselves online, forget those marginalized by the Digital Divide or violate the "goodness and intimacy of human sexuality." To that we can only say, leave Britney alone!!

In one video already uploaded to YouTube, the Pope calls the internet a new way to talk to God. Perhaps he doesn't see it as a way to talk to nonbelievers on other sites, as embedding of the videos has been turned off. That seems strange given the Church's interest in finding new members, but presumably the Vatican doesn't want the Pope's videos showing up in snarky blog posts like this, or worse. It can get pretty raunchy on YouTube, and though the new Obama adminstration can forgive YouTube its sins with a change in official policy, we hardly expect the Catholic Church to do so.

The Vatican Channel contains 12 videos at launch, most of which are quite short, many under 1 minute long. That's not bad for a religion that is known for holding hour-long rituals, but it truly is a new era of communication. Five seconds is all it takes these days to turn around quickly, open your eyes wide, play some dramatic music and change the world.

Now Put Your Junk in The Box

What will the Vatican be posting on its YouTube channel? So far there's some blessing of lambs and a discussion of the Vatican's relationship with the media. We're hoping to see some gems like when the Pope said last month that homosexuality is as big a threat to humanity as global warming, but we'd be willing to settle for the Numa Numa dance, too.

Who's next? The President of the US, the Pope, who isn't on YouTube these days?

Heavy Metal Islam

The blog's focus is clearly illustrated with the most recent post at time of writing: Mark LeVine and Heavy Metal Islam: The Fight Over What Islam Means. The post explains the story of scholar and professional musician Mark LeVine, who traveled across the Middle East "playing with and studying heavy metal bands in the area after the September 11 attacks in 2001." According to Foley's post, Mark LeVine's work uses "the universal language of music to articulate the diversity of Islam in contemporary times."

The post finishes with a selection of links to various media - Flickr, podcasts, the Heavy Metal Islam homepage, LeVine's blog, links to audio. There's also mention of a radio broadcast LeVine will be doing this Thursday, on 'Here on Earth: Radio Without Borders' - which is a radio program by one of the organizations behind the blog, Wisconsin Public Radio.

Incidentally, if you want a 1-line explanation of what Heavy Metal Islam is, this quote at the top of the HMI homepage - attributed to one of the founders of the Moroccan heavy-metal scene, Reda Zine - sums it up: "We play heavy metal because our lives are heavy metal."

The trailer for a documentary called Heavy Metal in Baghdad, via InsideIslam

How Inside Islam Started

We asked Kaitlin Foley to tell us more about Inside Islam and how it got started. A recent graduate of University of Wisconsin-Madison, Foley has a degree in International Studies and Political Science. She focused on Islamic studies for her degree and so the blog is kind of an extension of that. She explained:

"The project as a whole is a product of University of Wisconsin-Madison, of which me, the blogger, and the pubic radio shows are only part of... in the end, we hope to have a wealth of resources that people around the world can access about Islam and Muslim culture worldwide. This includes digital stories, blogs, YouTube videos, music, and all other types of popular content on the web."

Foley told us that the response to the blog has been "positive from the Muslim community online." She said that it "seems to be an issue people are really concerned about and want to talk about in a new way." The Internet, said Foley, "is a way to talk about political, cultural and global issues in a democratic way." The blog's goal is to "create a dialogue and raise some debates about hot issues in a meaningful way."

The blog is closely linked to the radio show 'Here on Earth: Radio Without Borders', mentioned above. The first radio show to be broadcast is on tomorrow, about Heavy Metal Islam. The second show is October 30 on the topic of Muslims and social media.

The final question we asked Kaitlin Foley was: are you a Muslim yourself? She replied that she's not, although she said a couple of her supervisors are. She explained further that "even though I'm not Muslim, I think Islam is a big concern for anyone with a T.V. or internet access and [it's] an important way people understand the world."

Islam on the Web

Inside Islam is an interesting use case for a blog - it's using a two-way medium, along with new media tools like podcasting and Flickr, to open up discussion on a religion that, in this day and age, can be easily misunderstood.

For context, we must point out that Islam is already a popular topic in the blogosphere. We noted in a post in November that trend charts showed more Web activity about Islam than about Christianity. There is indeed an Alltop category for Muslims, which has a lot of blogs in it. Not to mention there are some web 2.0 blogs that cover the Middle East, including ArabCrunch and IslamCrunch.

Let us know in the comments about other religious organizations or independent sites using the Web in innovative ways.

Top photo: Mark LeVine

See also:
Religion and Web Technology, Part 1: LifeChurch.tv
Religion and Web Technology, Part 2: Shalom Hartman Institute

Abbey told us that he has done "a significant amount of research into the Jewish world's usage of Web 2.0 features". And it is clear from Abbey's presence on the site that he is working hard at putting that Web theory into practice.

Features

Alan Abbey listed the following Web initiatives for his organization:

• Weekly postings of original, Op-Ed length essays by the leaders and scholars on topics of interest to the Jewish/Israeli worlds. "We include "talkbacks" (reader comments) on our articles, some of which draw large responses", said Abbey.
• Educational material, including complete course syllabuses.
• Stream and host video lectures from the scholars and leaders, both onsite and offsite. Abbey said that they're using "Blip.tv for full-length videos, YouTube for short ones (we were named 2nd most-viewed Israeli non-profit on YouTube), and Jewish video sites Yideoz.com and JewTube.com for additional distribution (although both sites have their technical issues)."
• Video-enabled distance learning to rabbis, teachers and community leaders in North America. Abbey told us that they are "transitioning this fall to online video via Ustream.tv and/or Mogulus.com." As a matter of interest, LifeChurch.tv also uses Mogulus.
• A blog running on wordpress.com, "to allow us to use some Hebrew, to enhance search, and to give a less formal view of our activities." Abbey said that they're also building sites for some of their leading individuals.
• Hartman is developing an iTunes podcast, both audio and video versions.
• Abbey says that they are "working on enhancing the Wikipedia entries others have created."
• The Institute is developing a Facebook strategy. As of now, Abbey uses his own Facebook page to promote the Institute's content and videos. He's also created a Facebook group for a group of North American rabbis studying with them. "I regularly place our material on related Jewish/Israeli FB groups", said Abbey, "as well as promote through Twitter." He noted that several of their groups use Google or Yahoo groups too, which he wants to formalize some more.

One of the challenges that Abbey notes, is getting their users to participate in social networking on the Web. Abbey puts this down to their audience being "older than the standard online audience", but he thinks they are "slowly making headway."

Analysis

As with LifeChurch.tv, Hartman is making particularly good use of online video. Whereas an apparently well-funded LifeChurch effectively built their own online tv service, Hartman makes use of Blip.tv and YouTube and other third party providers. There is absolutely nothing wrong with that, indeed it's often a good move because you can tap into existing communities. Alan Abbey wrote in a recent post that "more than 25,000 people have viewed Hartman Institute videos since we began posting them on the Web, and that's not counting the thousands who have seen them on our website's Digital Lectures channel".

Overall Hartman's web presence makes good use of current trends such as online video, RSS and blogging. They are making progress with other trends, such as social networking and online education. It has to be noted that the web design is relatively no-frills, but that can be gradually worked on over time.

It's pleasing to see the Op-Eds sometimes attracting large comments. This indicates that the move towards individual sites for leaders will pay off in the long run, provided those sites are more like blogs than static websites. Similarly, we encourage Hartman to continue to explore ways to entice their users and students to participate on the site - whether it be in writing, video, photos, or any other creative online activity.

Finally, with Alan Abbey leading Hartman's web efforts, the Institute has a passionate web advocate. You really can't ask for more in any organization! Well done Alan and keep up the great work.

In the comments, we'd love to find out about other religious organizations and the web activities they're doing. Don't be shy about promoting your own sites, or those you know of in your particular faith.

See also:
Religion and Web Technology, Part 1: LifeChurch.tv
Religion and Web Technology, Part 3: Inside Islam

In this post we'll look at a Christian church, LifeChurch, which is using the Web in an extensive way. In upcoming posts we'll cover other religions, such as Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, etc. Note that we're going to keep a tight focus on the technology - rather than what is being preached with the technology.

LifeChurch.tv is a production of the Life Church, a Christian "megachurch" that formed in 1996 in Edmond, Oklahoma. It appears that the church started its tv operations in 2001, then in April 2006 the LifeChurch.tv "Internet Campus" was launched. This provided weekly live, interactive church broadcasts over the Internet, for anyone in the world to tune into. The website also began offering "online LifeGroups" (small collaborative networks). At the same time a sub-site called LifeChurch.tv Open started, with the aim of offering free content to other churches.

Last but not least, in April 2007, LifeChurch opened a presence in SecondLife. Andrea Useem attended one of the virtual world services, but wasn't overly impressed. "I was looking forward to chatting with people in the cavernous but furnished church lobby", she wrote, "[but] unfortunately, the 15 or so people who attended the service disappeared quickly, and I found myself as I usually am in Second Life -- wandering around by myself." (thanks Marcello for the link)

Praise Be Web 2.0

The LifeChurch websites today are an impressive and well designed collection of content, tools and online video. The main Internet Campus site features a blog which has many 'web 2.0' features: a variety of RSS feeds, embedded video widgets, 'share this' links, live prayer and help options, and connections to Facebook, MySpace, YouTube and Vimeo. Also the blog has a number of international translations via the Wordpress plugin Nothing2Hide - e.g. the Korean version.

Example video

The Open site also has a blog, written by the church pastors. Its most recent post at time of writing is about a new initiative called LifeShare, which Pastor Bobby Gruenewald describes as a "7-day challenge for the church to move together online with purpose." He describes how they're using the Web to connect with people:

"We're doing this at a few different levels, ranging from simple steps like tweets and internet campus e-invites to more in-depth efforts like sharing online how God is working in your life and embedding video teaching on your blog. We're connecting daily through a live video stream to talk about next steps and pray together. LifeShare is open to anyone, anywhere, so feel free to join us by signing up here."

LifeChurch's Web Apps

What's really great to see is how LifeChurch is using best-in-class web apps to create each different aspect of their online presence - Twitter for real-time communication, Wufoo to create their online forms, Blip.tv for video teaching, Mogulus for live broadcasting, and so on.

But they're also building their own apps, for example the recently announced ChurchMetrics.com, which is a web app that helps churches "track attendance, giving, salvations, and baptisms." As yet the app hasn't been launched publicly, but it sounds like a great example of web analytics applied to the real world (which on this blog means beyond tech!).

The main web app that LifeChurch has released so far is YouVersion.com, a free online Bible which presents Christian Scripture in a variety of media formats, including pictures, video, journal entries, and blog posts. The beta of this app was launched in October 2007. And yes, there is an iPhone app version!

Conclusion

Overall we come away very impressed by how LifeChurch is utilizing the Internet. It is using a variety of web apps to achieve its purpose, and creating its own as well. The church's websites and apps are visually rich and sophisticated in features.

Most importantly, the web activities of LifeChurch are bringing its message to many more people than they would've reached without an online presence. It's a great example of the mainstream web, using many of the tools and trends we've preached here on ReadWriteWeb over the years!

Tell us in the comments about other religious organizations using the Web. We're going to explore a few examples this week, from Christianity as well as other religions.

See also:
Religion and Web Technology, Part 2: Shalom Hartman Institute
Religion and Web Technology, Part 3: Inside Islam