Something that I haven’t encountered yet is a ministry or organization that is so bought into the idea of social media and networking as an effective strategy for communication that they’ve created a “lifestream” for their ministry.
What’s a “lifestream” you say? Good thing you asked:
Lifestreaming, according to Wordspy, is “an online record of a person’s daily activities, either via direct video feed or via aggregating the person’s online content such as blog posts, social network updates, and online photos.
And another definition:
In it’s simplest form it’s a chronological aggregated view of your life activities both online and offline. It is only limited by the content and sources that you use to define it.
There are a number of services out there that provide “lifestreaming” functionality for individuals… but I’ve never seen it done effectively for a ministry or church.
What are your thoughts?
If you want to dive in further and explore your options, a good place to start is the Lifestream Blog. It’s got all the info that you’ll need to get started.
In regards to Twitter… I think it can be done effectively if you're an organization. I started a twitter for my church (@oslc). I'm meeting with our communications department later this week to discuss what kind of content we're going to be giving it. We will likely feed the same information that we put into our "weekly connections" (newsletter) through @oslc. It can be used effectively as a form of communication in that regard.
While an organization doesn't have the same type of day-to-day experiences as a human… it still has things going on. Twitter can be useful for getting general information out for a church… IMO. Just look at @newspring. They don't update it constantly… but you sure see a lot of updates come Sunday.
hehe.
there's some strategy behind it all… follow through is important!
If God gets into this, we will have places to go to tell us what our life will be like tomorrow. And then we can port the info over to something like Lifestream.
God and the lifestream… sounds like a video game… or maybe that's just me.
this looks pretty cool, but it's going to take me a little while to filter it down in my brain.
dude, shouldn't take too long… you're smart.
I most definitely think a Ministry could leverage Lifestreaming as an effective tool. Twitter would be just one source for a useful stream. You could add a photo stream of events using Flickr or similar service, upcoming.com for schedules of future bible studies, recommended books to read using Goodreads.com, Delicious.com to link to relevant websites. And those are just some quick ideas. If proper thought is put into the types of content and streams to push, businesses or any other sector (including ministries) could benefit from Lifestreaming.
Very cool. thanks for this. brilliant!
man, that just weirds me out a bit!
does it? perhaps…