Video Blogging Tools

In my opinion, one of the tools that will help to revolutionize the internet as we know it today,  is going to be the handheld video camera.  These cameras can be purchased for anywhere between $100-$200 and will literally slip into your shirt pocket.  Some of these cameras will even record videos in high-definition.  If you are interested, I have recommended one camera brand that I am especially fond of on my personal blog, you can find that post here…

Most of these cameras that are on the market today have a USB plug built into them, or at least come equipped with a USB cable that allows them to connect to your computer system quickly and easily to transfer the videos to your hard drive or onto many of the online video sharing websites such as YouTube or Vimeo.

My home church, The Church Alive, recently purchased one of these cameras and has used it countless times to record messages about upcoming events, youth functions, or pastoral video blogs.  These videos, once uploaded to these video sharing websites can be added to your website in just a matter of seconds once they are uploaded.

Here’s an example of a video shot on one of our Men’s Retreats..

What is Facebook Connect?

Facebook is the largest social networking destination on the web today, and it’s continued growth and popularity is fascinating.  One of our most requested features is Facebook Connect, this allows Facebook users to use their Facebook accounts to interact on your website as well as sharing information with their friends on Facebook.  Here is a good explanation of Facebook Connect from Facebook’s blog:

Facebook Connect is the next evolution of Facebook Platform – enabling you to integrate the power of Facebook Platform into your own site.  Enable your users to…

• Seamlessly “connect” their Facebook account and information with your site
• Connect and find their friends who also use your site
• Share information and actions on your site with their friends on Facebook

Trusted Authentication

Users can connect their Facebook account with any partner Web site using our simplified and trusted authentication. Whether at login, or anywhere else a developer would like to add social context, the user can authenticate and connect their account in a trusted environment. The user will have total control of the permissions granted.

Real Identity

Facebook users represent themselves with their real names and real identities. With Facebook Connect, users can bring their real identity information with them wherever they go on the Web, including: basic profile information, profile picture, name, friends, photos, events, groups, and more.

Friend Linking

People count on Facebook to stay connected to their friends and family. With Facebook Connect, they can take their friends with them wherever they go on the Web. Developers can add rich social context to their sites. Developers even can dynamically show which of their Facebook friends already have accounts on their sites.

Dynamic Privacy

As a user moves around the open Web, their privacy settings will follow them, ensuring that users’ information and privacy rules are always up to date. For example, if a user changes their profile picture, or removes a friend connection, this will be automatically updated in the external site. And the users can control who can see what pieces of their information – the same rules that they set on Facebook can be applied through your site too using our dynamic privacy controls.

Social Distribution

As a user moves around the open Web, they discover interesting content, share information about themselves, and engage in a lot of experiences. With Facebook Connect, users can easily share and distribute this information and actions to their friends via Facebook Feed, requests, and notifications.

Finding Friends on Twitter

One of the most common questions I get about the social network Twitter is, “How do I know who to follow?”  The answer to this question depends greatly on what your goals are.  For instance recently my business partners and I launched a Nascar related project and we setup a twitter account to help us marketing this project.  Naturally we wanted to follow only people with a similar interest in Nascar as a topic.  I used several tools that I will outline below to build our network inside of Twitter.

One of the best tools for finding people to follow is Twitter search.  Twitter has it’s own search engine that allows you to look for words used in recent tweets.  The results come back to you in chronological order.  For instance, here’s a link to the Twitter search for “Nascar”. Once you have entered in your search term(s) and pulled up the list of recent tweets, you can click on the names of those Twitter users who posted the tweets and follow them.  In a lot of cases these members will follow you back, this is totally up to the user though, and some do not follow back no matter how hard you try.

Another method to adding followers is to locate users who have similar interests or goals to you and browse their followers, or who they follow and add these users to follow.  Again, you will pick up some follow backs by doing this, and some users will not follow, it’s entirely up to the user.

There are some other good tools for locating twitterers to follow as well such as Twittergrid.com.  Here’s a link to the Twittergrid Results for the keyword “Nascar”.  The object, of course, is to pick up as many followers to your Twitter feed that you possibly can but not too many that you can’t possibly stay in touch with your followers.

Is MySpace Relevant?

There is a lot of debate today as to whether the social network MySpace will ever reclaim it’s popularity again.  In my opinion, it probably will not, and I say that for a couple of reasons.  The primary reason is that Facebook has a much better product, and has done a much better job promoting their product.

New Innovations such as Facebook Connect, which allows Facebook users to interact with external websites using their Facebook accounts, are starting to show up all over the internet.  MySpace has not been able to counter with a comparable product for authentication.

Another reason that MySpace may not ever recover is ironically one of the reasons it grew so fast in the first place.  MySpace users have the ability to customize, or individualize, their MySpace profile pages however they wish.  The end result for MySpace in giving their end users this creative control is often times a mixture of loud offensive music, pornographic images, and of course tons of comment spam.

When I am consulting with a new client about social media, we typically try to focus on the two social networks that present the most value, those are Facebook and Twitter.

Streaming Video Solutions

If your ministry has considered adding live streaming video of your services on your website, there are two services that you should know about.  Both services are web-based solutions that allow you to stream your services online and embed this video onto your website.  These services are Mogulus and Ustream.

The only equipment required on your end to get started is a video camera that will stream via USB, and of course a computer system that can connect to the internet.  An internet connection with at least 700kbps of upstream is almost a neccessity.

My home church, The Church Alive, has opted to go with Ustream to do our online streaming and we have been extremely satisfied with the end result.  Visitors to the website have the ability to watch the services and interact in an optional chat room that is moderated by our volunteers.

Streaming video from either of these services can be embedded into your website with just a few clicks of the mouse.  If this is something you are interested in learning more about, please feel free to contact us and we will be glad to talk with you in detail about your project.