Businesses are constantly blurring the lines between advertising and social media. I have despised a lot of these campaigns. Think Dr. Pepper and Chocolate Rain. I don’t mind advertising through social media and I certainly don’t think it hurts the authenticity of the medium. Myspace did that.

One that recently caught my attention was the Angry Whopper Facebook App. Users boot 10 friends and get a free Angry Whopper. I thought it was genius. Facebook did not. They axed the app saying it was inconsistent with Facebook’s values. I thought the idea was genius.

Social media is a constantly changing beast with virtually limitless potential for good.

How is your church using social media? (Maybe I should ask, is your church.) Some churches have opted for rip-off christianized versions of social media, like GodTube.com or GodSpace.com. Others have come to the game late. I remember starting up a xanga site for my youth group months after all my students had started their xangas (which happened to be right around the time myspace took off). The tragedy of being late is that you end up chasing every trendy format around the web 2.0 (2.5, 3.0, whatever) with limited results.

Twitter is still strong. It just passed Digg in popularity. I just downloaded the e-book “The Reason Your Church Must Twitter” and am planning to review soon. I twitter. A lot of my friends twitter. But if your church is just now figuring out twitter, it may be too late. By the time you get the hang of it, it may not be the social media giant it is today.

So, where does the church fit into the social media scene?

3 Responses to “Facebook, Angry Whoppers, and the Future of Social Media: where does the church fit into the social media scene?”

1. David K. says:

   January 25, 2009 at 9:38 am

   It is better to follow around “big game” (i.e. myspace, facebook, etc) then to create “lab rats” in your basement (i.e. Godspace, etc). You may not know what the next trend will be until it is in place and half-way out the door, but your home-grown church version of this trend will never be a trend, not to mention, even if you got your youth group into it, it wouldn’t have the potential to reach their friends outside the church like facebook or myspace. The whole social network trend is funny cause if you were to ask me what Xanga was, my 1st reply would probably be a herbal supplement… and to this day I could not tell you it this site was more like myspace, blogger, or picassa…
   But trends come and go
2. Rob says:

   January 26, 2009 at 2:17 pm

   I think if there are people (in the congregation) who are in to the social networking scene, it’s good to have a connection made. I find it annoying when advertising seems to dominate the scene, however. That’s one of the reasons I moved away from Myspace, and why I find Facebook and Twitter to be appealing. I’m fine with them having advertisements, I just don’t like it when they start to define the experience. I lump in churches with that when they use social networking for marketing. I’m more than cool with someone I have a relationship with saying they look forward to an event, but I don’t necessarily want my inbox and comments section cluttered with advertisement spam from anybody.
   I just ate a whopper. But it was a nice one.
3. #MHC The Church That Twitters | epicdialogue.com says:

   March 9, 2009 at 6:01 pm

   [...] Church That Twitters ?Churches and social medial have been the topic of a few posts recently (Facebook, Angry Whoppers, and the Future of Social Media on January 23, and The Spiritual Discipline of Twittering). It is a subject of great interest to [...]