Robert Scoble has posted a note about future directions in web useage. He’s a very popular blogger, so you may have already seen this.
“Now, what is the Web these companies are gearing up for? Yes, you’d be right if you guessed a bloggy Web. A Web with real people talking about real stuff on it. Not a manufactured site that has no life. No soul.
Why? Cause they are seeing that what they are doing now isn’t working. People aren’t engaging with their company the way they want. They aren’t getting the Google page rank they want (or the MSN or the Yahoo rank either).
They see that their advertising dollars are bringing them less and less and they are seeing that a new word-of-mouth network has been built that’ll get stories from 15 small conversations to around-the-world newspaper, TV, and magazine coverage in 36 hours and they are scared!”
What I personally find interesting is in the question of what this “Human Web” or “Bloggy Web” might look like for churches. We’ve just moved to a static front page for our parish site, but have added blog pages for some of our key program areas. (The blog pages are very new, but I think we’re moving in the direction that Robert is suggesting.)
Have any of the rest of you observed this trend? Any ideas how we might use it to better communicate the Gospel of Jesus Christ?
Read the rest here: The next Web is the human Web
As usual, Scoble is spot on. If there is any organization that needs to present a human face to the world, it’s the church. The web presents a unique opportunity to do that, but also a unique challenge, especially for the small parish which isn’t blessed with a supply of techno-savvy priests and parishioners.
The challenge lies not so much in creating the web site, or hosting it, but in supplying fresh content and communicating your message. Right now, the typical church looks at putting up a web site and all they see is a giant technological barrier that they don’t know how to scale. Blogs present a tremendous opportunity here, not just in terms of a writing style that presents a human face, but as a technology which enables the average person to get something up quickly without getting overwhelmed by the technology.
I like the idea of multiple blogs. Churches are communities, and the rector’s voice shouldn’t be the only one we hear. (No offense, Nick.) We should be hearing from the choir director, christian ed, or anyone else with something to contribute. We should also be using our web sites to strengthen the parish community, not just as a yellow page ad for the outsiders. A lot of other opportunities present themselves if you can take down the technological barriers and allow regular contributions from ordinary folks.