I just tweeted a couple of tweets bemoaning how it is SO HARD to find church related communication folks who are attracted to tech discussions about Social Media apps. The ones I am thinking of are those tech discussions that delve into what users need in order to find useful social interaction. The Gillmor Gang (youtube channel: http://www.youtube.com/user/stevegillmor )and some of Leo Laporte’s Twit.tv shows (like This Week In Google at twit.tv/twig ) These discussions regularly feature discussion about the sociology of social media technology. I like them for the same reason why I like WIRED magazine. They cover the SOCIAL EXPERIENCE of the Web and related tech by talking about what makes a particular technology, app, or experience useful. They talk to the developers from these companies about what they are trying to improve, fix, change, or invent in order to add value to the Social Media experience. They talk about issues such as Net Neutrality and what the impact of one decision or another (or proposed decision) will have on our experience of the Internet.
It just KILLS me, as I tweeted earlier, that there aren’t numerous people whose jobs entail communications in the church, frequenting such discussions, or talking endlessly about them. My blog posts and tweets get very little feedback when I delve into issues of user experience such as this. And that’s very frustrating to me. I have the feeling that I will want to come back and “re-tweet” the tweet that gets pushed out when I publish this post, after I have found several more church-centered communication folks who do desire to study the ways that the church should be designing their Social Media experience, and what impact particular Social Media-enabling technologies and apps have on how we do things as the church.
I want to delve deeper (and have) into the very idea of online communication, and how it falls short as a vehicle for community, and how it enhances community, or how it creates community, and what kind of community we are talking about in each of those instances.
It is also disconcerting to see how eager churches and church orgs are to draw on secular marketing agencies ideas re: Social Media strategy, but virtually no corresponding eagerness to delve into the technological issues like what the user is looking for, how they use the tools, and how well certain tools help us do things that are useful for the church community. In other words, discussions like what The Gillmor Gang has on a regular basis, and also on various twit.tv shows, are hardly ever IF ever had in church organizations. And to me, this presents a danger that churches will implement these tools in a way indistinguishable from the way the rest of the world. And that should be , in many ways, disconcerting to all of us. The kind of reflection and analysis and conversation had by The Gillmor Gang on Social Media is instructive (or SHOULD be).
Is anyone out there RIGHT NOW listening? And who do you follow that might be tackling the theological questions about technology and community?
