Collateral Damage

Social networking seems to have found religion or visa versa.

A site called CircleBuilder.com wants to be a MySpace and FaceBook “where people of all faiths can come together to nurture their personal relationships and put their faith into practice.”

The idea of an on-line social networking service for religion seems odd to me. Churches, mosques, synagogues are one of, if not THE orginal social network. That person-to-person community and connection is such an essential part of what these places are that having an on-line simulacrum seems … I don’t know exactly … but at least jarring.

It is a deeply non-denominational site – which in a way I also find jarring.

CircleBuilder is an online networking and management platform enabling faith-based organizations to increase their membership, improve fundraising, organize events and more efficiently serve their community. Through our simple to use web-based interface we create numerous “touch points”—personalized emails, shared calendars, blogs, text messages, online donations and storefronts, streaming media and newsletters—by which members can communicate with their organizations and with each other.

Nothing wrong with any of this, it’s just that I’m a uncomfortable with the euphemisms they use: people of faith & faith-based organization. While it is inclusive it is also so inclusive as to be meaningless: Cubs fans are a people of faith and support a faith-based organization, after all. Isn’t our current administration’s foreign policy faith-based, in the worst possible meaning of the phrase. (And isn’t the CircleBuilder logo just a wee bit Christian looking? Maybe what makes me uncomfortable about these euphemisms is that so far I have only heard them from Christians so they’re like code words to use in situations where that pesky separation of church-and-state issue might come up.)

I come from Rhode Island, a state founded by Roger Williams because he thought people should have the freedom to worship or not worship in whatever way they please without government interference. I have always been very proud of the fact that my little home state was started for this reason. (And it doesn’t hurt that Williams actually purchased the land for his first settlement from the Native Americans who were living in the area!) So I am a big believer in the ecumenical.

That said, I think a person belongs to a church or a synagogue or a mosque or wood grove or temple to Apollo or whatever and not to just some generic “faith.” Heck, my religious beliefs are so idiosyncratic that once you get past prayer and the belief in a deity I’m generally at variance with some tenet or another of pretty much every organized system of worship. But just the same, I’d rather be called someone who believes in God than a “person of faith.”

Wonder what the folks over at my favorite church marketing blog think about all this?

UPDATE: Just found a VentureBeat article from earlier this week on the general theme of churches and social networking … click here … the author doesn’t mention CircleBuilder, but I don’t have a lot of those things he has … what are they called? … oh yeah, facts.

Officials at Tarbes-Lourdes airport in southern France said that bottles of water from the shrine at Lourdes could present a potential terrorist threat. The pilgrims were told they could not carry holy water in bottles bigger than the maximum allowed: 100 ml. 

No divine intervention with security?

Another possible explanation: Airport Security is actually being staffed by Vampires. Think about it.

BTW, the Vatican knows from customer service:

The airline provided a small bottle of holy water, in the shape of the Virgin Mary, for each passenger, once they had boarded the plane for the flight home from Lourdes.

Are they being sold on eBay yet?

On behalf of comedians everywhere I would like to say, “Thank God for Vatican Airlines.”

From the CustomScoop blog:

In a story about the Michael Vick dog fighting allegations and his NFL suspension, MSNBC ran a quote that they attributed to the Rev. Al Sharpton, which stated:

“If the police caught Brett Favre (a white quarterback for the Green Bay Packers) running a dolphin-fighting ring out of his pool, where dolphins with spears attached to their foreheads fought each other, would they bust him? Of course not.”

MSNBC said the quote came from Sharpton’s “personal blog.” Which, of course, it didn’t—it came from a site that is clearly a parody site. The post on News Groper is so obviously a parody I can’t imagine who thought it was actually Rev. Sharpton’s blog. On the page, it has listed Al Gore, Bill Clinton, Lindsey Lohan, Dalia Lama, Paris Hilton, Mitt Romney, and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as “featured bloggers.” Seriously, no one at MSNBC said “hey…wait a minute…”?

The debate over the difference between bloggers and journalists is a false dichotomy. ANYONE who is willing to do the research, ask the questions, check the facts and publish the results is a journalist.

That automatically disqualifies any number of bloggers and people who are paid journalists.

As I always said to new reporters and people wanting to go into journalism: The actual basic skills of journalism aren’t that hard to learn. What is hard to learn is to think critically. That’s why I ALWAYS encourage people who want to become journalists not to major in journalism but in something that will teach you to think. Most of the rest you can learn on the job.

Among my 1001 obsessions/things I collect (board games, books, books by HL Mencken, dice, gargoyles, minor league baseball caps, Ulysses S. Grant & Teddy Roosevelt action figures — not kidding, meeples, lead type, staplers) is old typewriters. I have six and would list them but am in San Mateo, CA, right now and don’t remember them all. So I was quite pleased when BoingBoing listed The Classic Typewriter Page today. I was even more tickled though when they brought to light this amazing felt typewriter on display at the site Crafster. WOW.

Mr. K was 75 and died from lung cancer about a year after a dispute with the landlord forced him to close the club which brought us the Ramones, Talking Heads, Blondie, Patti Smith: aka 75% of the music of my adolescence. To my everlasting regret despite living in New York from ‘81 to ‘85 I never got to the club. At least I made it to Max’s Kansas City before it closed. And to kill whatever chance I might have had of actually having any cool cred let me say that I made it to Max’s for lunch. Yeah, I’m hardcore.

FYI: The complete name was CBGB & OMFUG which stood for Country, Bluegrass and Blues & Other Music For Uplifting Gourmandisers.

NewsCorp is apparently determined to wring every last short-term dollar it can out of MySpace. That’s why we now have MySpace clothes and music. This seems a classic example of bad brand extensions. It’s like the old school marketing types said, “well the kids are really into music and clothes!” But is there one type of music and clothes that appeal to “the kids”?

The community features an all new look, and a host of new programming such as MySpace Presents: The Fit, MySpace Muse presented by Who Wear What Daily, InStyle News and a collection of amateur and professional fashion videos from runway shows and MySpaceTV. You’ll also be able to see featured designers, profiles, and videos.

As a brand, MySpace’s core value is about creating your own identity. A better fit, if you will pardon the pun, in clothes would have been a line of DIY kits and such. Instead we get very typical marketing think that’s just about putting the brand on anything that might vaguely seem appropriate. The thinking is all about what customers will buy right now and not what they will respond to over the long run.

I have no doubt that Mr. Murdoch & co. will make some fast money but this — along with the gross amount of commercial placement on the site — will kill it. They don’t seem to have much interest in anything besides selling ads to companies that want to connect with the people who use their site. That means they are losing touch with the people who are actually using the site and made it into what it is — or was.

WebProNews reports on an IDC study supporting my point:

“Social networks cannot guarantee a brand-safe environment. Advertisers don’t want to see their ads displayed alongside illicit content, for example,” says Karsten Weide, program director of IDC’s Digital Marketplace: Media and Entertainment. “The dilemma for social networks is if they start to control what content users can post, they will lose popularity, which is what attracted advertisers in the first place.”

And there’s this from the essential Jeremiah Owyang:

Myspace’s younger demographic rates are decreasing says this Business Week’s July 07 report: “but U.S. visitors under 18 to MySpace dropped 30 percent over the past year, while Facebook’s rose about 2 1/2 times”

This is definitely MySpace’s jump the shark moment.

(Wow, that was waaay too well informed. I promise a return to the usual lack of info ASAP.)

Because nothing beats fear-mongering when it comes to pandering for votes, that’s why.

A retired veteran and candidate for Oklahoma State School Superintendent says he wants to make schools safer by creating bulletproof textbooks. Bill Crozier says the books could give students and teachers a fighting chance if there’s a shooting at their school. “Our experiment was as scientific as we could make it, just two or three people who had been in the military,? says Crozier. (Link via TechDirt)

Y’know the more of this there is the harder it is to remember that BulletProofBaby.Net is satire.

“The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary. ” — Mencken.

The world’s first airline for Catholic pilgrims has Vatican logos on the headrests and air hostesses’ uniforms and a slogan no commercial carrier can compete with: “I’m Searching for Your Face, Lord.” The airline took to the heavenly skies Monday with a flight from Rome’s Fiumicino airport for the shrine of Lourdes in France.

Best quote from a competitor:

The Vatican hopes to fly pilgrims from Rome to Santiago de Compostela in Spain, a route already serviced by the low-budget carrier. “Ryanair already performs miracles that even the Pope’s boss can’t rival, by delivering pilgrims to Santiago de Compostela for the heavenly price of 10 euros,” Ryanair said in a statement.

Competition is hell.

Sometimes the jokes write themselves.

• I believe Woody Allen had a line to the effect that the only drawback to traveling by transubstantiation is that they still loose your luggage.
• Midwest Airlines has (had?) a tradition of a serving freshly baked cookies on each flight, I can only hope Papal Air doesn’t follow the same route. Will the pilots be allowed to drink communion wine before flying?
• Unfortunately the airline won’t be flying to the US because the FAA won’t certify God as a co-pilot.

Police in China’s capital said Tuesday will start patrolling the Web using animated beat officers that pop up on a user’s browser and walk, bike or drive across the screen warning them to stay away from illegal Internet content.

Suddenly the phrase “blue screen of death” takes on a whole new meaning. Oddly the police aren’t wearing Google or Yahoo logos.  C’mon, guys! Sponsorship opportunity!

A popular school uniform company in the UK is considering adding satellite tracking devices to its clothing so parents will know where their children are. As a parent, I applaud the idea, but realistically, what teenager is going to wear GPS clothing, never mind the fact that most kids don’t want to wear uniforms to begin with. Trutex reports that 59 per cent of the parents they interviewed would buy the uniforms, but there’s no word on pricing or a tentative release date. Now if they would just develop a small GPS transmitter we could slip into our children’s backpack, then we’d be in business.

Why not just use one of those collars like they do on Meerkat Manor?

From an organizational standpoint, Alcoholics Anonymous has many admirable qualities. First, it doesn’t accept money from anyone but members of AA. Second it has a long and cherished tradition of anonymity.

The principle of anonymity is a basic tenet of our fellowship. Those who are reluctant to seek our help may overcome their fear if they are confident that their anonymity will be respected. In addition, and perhaps less understood, our tradition of anonymity acts as a restraint on our members, reminding us that we are a program of principles, not personalities, and that no individual A.A. member may presume to act as a spokesman or leader of our fellowship. If an A.A member is identified in the media, we ask that you please use first names only (e.g. Bob S. or Alice F.) and that you not use photographs or electronic images in which member’s faces may be recognized.

These two policies may have something to do with the fact that AA has survived so much longer than other groups which have tried to help alcoholics.

Sadly neither policy is in evidence at the Recovery Media Network’s new social networking site, 12StepSpace.com. There you are free to post a picture & profile of yourself and tell the world of your struggle to recover from alcoholism/gambling/overwork/internet addiction/stuffed animals/men& women who love too much, et al. Once you have added your profile sleep soundly in the knowledge that your effort is putting money in the pockets of the site’s owners & sponsors. The featured sponsor? A drug company hawking its drugs to help you overcome your dependence on drugs. That’s some catch that Catch-22. While it is disgusting, it isn’t novel: Another drug company already started a MySpace page under the guise of helping others.

Mashable pretty much nails everything that’s wrong with this attempt.

While 12stepSpace celebrates things like a user’s Recovery Birthday, and offers a buddy to chat with if you need someone to talk to on an immediate basis, there’s no distinct emphasis on recovery or the 12 step process. Having a dedicated section for online and offline resources, as well as inspirational stories or a physician or clinic finder (that’s not an advertiser) would make the community feel more like a place for sharing stories and finding help, and less like a MySpace clone.

Yeah, but that suggests there’s anything besides cynicism at work here.

(UPDATE: My apologies for attributing cynical motives to the organizers of 12StepSpace. It’s the drug company that’s cynical. Judging by their complaints I’d say the site’s organizers are just amazingly naive.)

To mark my birthday (October 15) someone is starting a trend to try and get every blogger to discuss the environment on that day.

What would happen if every blog published posts discussing the same issue, on the same day?

OK, maybe it’s the cynic in me but I think the answer is: Not much.

For what it’s worth, I too will play along.

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Microsoft and Yahoo have both signed an agreement with the Chinese Government, which pushes a desire for the two companies to record the identities of bloggers and censored content. Eighteen other web companies have signed this agreement as well.

I’d like to ask Mr. or Mrs. Gates two questions: 1) How do you explain this to the kids? Exactly how does this square with the goals of The Gates Foundation?

Bill and Melinda Gates believe every life has equal value. In 2000, they created the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to help reduce inequities in the United States and around the world.

Y’know, when Ford was doing business with the Nazis at least it was in keeping with the publicly stated beliefs of the company’s founder.

Mr. Welch: You’ve done enough. Have you no sense of decency, sir, at long last? Have you left no sense of decency?

I’m not sure if my problem with MySpace is generational or what. I just find it has waaaaay too many ads for me. But I am so totally not it’s key demographic that what I think really doesn’t matter. Still the news that they’re looking at ads on profile pages is very odd.

MySpace may allow users to place ads on their pages, lifting the ban on user ads that’s been in place for most of the site’s history. The move would aim to increase MySpace’s revenue, so no doubt MySpace would demand a cut of any ads you put on your pages.

That said — as the article points out — given that the ads are for things the person themselves is marketing (via ebay or elsewhere) then it actually might sit well with their members.

BTW, here’s my profile. I promise soon to post all the bazillion or so different sites I now have a profile on. It’s a hazard of my new job.

Finally made it into the Wall Street Journal.

The trend towards niche networks makes sense because many adults don’t just want to meet new people for the sake of meeting new people the way teenagers do – they want to meet people they have something in common with, Constantine von Hoffman, a social media consultant for Spoke.com, a lead-generation Web site, tells the Business Technology Blog. Social networking can help with that. “Everything has its obsessive types,” says von Hoffman. And that’s the energy that corporate social-networking initiatives should be trying to tap into, both for their customers and their employees.