In your Face
I recently joined Facebook accidentally. I checked out the site to search for an old friend, realized I could only view her profile by registering, and in the course of registering inadvertently created my own profile and flung online friend "invites" to my email address book.
Facebook is one of the newer online phenomenons; it rocketed founder Mark Zuckerberg from a 19 year-old college student to a 23 year-old uber-wealthy Harvard dropout. 35 million people use the site to remain connected with high school and college buddies, work associates, family, and even strangers with shared interests. (One of my friends, along with 52 other like-minded folks, belongs to the "Holy Crap! American Gladiators is coming back on the air!!" group.)
Status updates ("Jennifer Taylor is not returning your calls because she has too much work") and uploadable applications that let you share your personality style, load your favorite music, or adopt virtual pets provide countless opportunities for customization, and its emphasis on connecting with people you already know--rather than the massive tagging of "friends" on MySpace--helps Facebook brand itself as a cooler, more exclusive community.
A recent Newsweek article explains Zuckerberg's vision of the site, which "revolves around a concept he calls the 'social graph.' As he describes it, this is a mathematical construct that maps the real-life connections between every human on the planet. Each of us is a node radiating links to the people we know."
While it may take more than six degrees of separation to link to someone else, it is possible to see your friends' friends on their page, then invite them to be your friends, thus giving you access to friends twice removed and adding literal and figurative links to a bigger and bigger network.
I don't have time to do all this (my status update could just as easily, if more ironically, read "Jennifer Taylor is not on Facebook because she has too much work") but it's an interesting concept. One of the company's co-founders recently asserted that in five years' time, "everyone on the planet" will be on Facebook.
What kind of potential does this have for your local church, for the churches in your city, and for all of us together? Do you have a Facebook page? Are you doing anything interesting with it?
posted by Jen @ 4:45 PM
5 Comments:
Jen,
I use Facebook almost exclusively to communicate with my students. I am a campus minister at a public university and, surprisingly, most students here don't even check their email on a regular basis anymore. They check Facebook.
A couple of stories:
I posted a link to my Facebook profile on our website. Then I sent 450 postcards out to potential freshmen, inviting them to look at our website. A few students added me to their Facebook as friends. I contacted each of them, introduced myself, and stuck up Facebook "conversations" with them. I felt like we had a small connection.
Then, when they arrived on campus, each of them came to our ministry events, got plugged in, and are becoming a vital part of our community. And it all started with Facebook.
Every single event we do is on Facebook. In fact, that's how students sign up for the event. All of my "follow-up" I do on Facebook. All of my electronic communication I do with students, I do on Facebook.
I understand I am on a college campus, but I see potential for this kind of outreach, connection, follow-up, and ministry for any church with people who may be on Facebook.
Jen:
I just started with Facebook a few weeks ago after we hosted a group of college and high school students here in Taiwan where we serve as missionaries. All but 2 of the group of 13 is on Facebook and it is great to keep in touch with them. I started searching for some students who came on a trip here in 2004 and found most of them on Facebook too.
I wish all my supporters were using it!
...so that's why you haven't returned my call...
Thanks for the post! I use Facebook to communicate with my middle school and high school students as well. What an awesome resource.
I do not have a Facebook profile yet, I do enjoy being a part of the Christian Networking on Shoutlife. Check it out.
www.shoutlife.com
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