This is a very busy season for college ministry. Lots of schools are returning to session and so we have been gearing up. We sort of have a slow building wave. LMU, USC and a few other schools returned this week, and then at the end of September, UCLA will return with a bang, as they are the largest component of our ministry from a numbers and leadership standpoint. So the next few weeks are being spent building towards our big kickoff on September 26th.
We moved to a new building last night which we really love. As our group grows and we try to find new ways to foster community through activities and interaction at our worship nights, we are excited to move to our new space which is right next to our new coffee shop.
How am I staying on top of everything and communicating with new and old students. Facebook. I can’t think of any other better way. I am more and more impressed with this social networking site every time I log on.
It’s timely that the Newsweek article, The Facebook Effect appeared on the cover of its issue last week.
Timely because I’m using it like crazy. Timely because my workshop at BlogWorldExpo and GodBlogCon is titled, New Media Ministry to the Myspace- Facebook Generation: Employing New Media Technologies Effectively In Youth Ministries
So I have been spending my usual blogging time working on this workshop and preparing the essay that will accompany the brochures for the conference.
Facebook is just so smart and intuitive in my opinion. I think one of the smartest things they have done is to allow outside designers develop applications for Facebook.
Zuckerberg’s next big move was to fill Facebook with all sorts of applications people could use without leaving the site–programs that took advantage of Facebook’s vast social networks. “There are a ton of different ways that people can share information, and rather than trying to develop all those ourselves, we wanted to allow anyone worldwide to create any kind of application,” says Zuckerberg. Thousands of developers, from big companies to kids in dorm rooms, instantly began creating applications that piggybacked on Facebook’s infrastructure. The new applications could get instant viral distribution, since the News Feed blasts a report to friends every time someone installs a new app (in other words, free promotion). Developers could make money from Facebook-embedded apps by taking ads or selling things–without sharing a penny of the proceeds with Facebook.
