Jumo: Getting Social About Causes

Daniel Klotz, Social Media Strategist

A new social network launched this morning. Jumo is focused on connecting people with other people and with organizations to make positive change happen in the world. It’s a little bit like a big collection of nonprofit organization Facebook pages, except more focused, more powerful, and more open. I’ve been keeping an eye on Jumo as it has been in development over the past year, ever since learning that it was the latest project of Chris Hughes, co-founder of Facebook and director of online organizing for Barack Obama’s 2008 presidential campaign. The marketplace of social networks is getting crowded, and it’s hard for a new service to take off. But if there’s one right now that has a change and could provide real value, it’s Jumo. I encourage you to check out Jumo, and while you’re there follow LIVE Green, one of YDOP’s favorite Lancaster-based nonprofits.

Other items I shared at Resource Friday today was that Facebook has added a way for page administrators to send a mass fan invitation to its e-mail list, and an obscure Google search command, “allintitle:”, which was a big help to me on a project this week.

“Wait, *how* many people are still using IE 6?!”

Mike Newswanger, Lead Programmer

Have you ever wondered how many people still use old versions of IE or how Chrome is doing as far as market share? W3Schools shows records of browsers, operating systems, and screen resolutions used to browse the internet in percentages, and it breaks it down monthly and contains records all the way back to 2002. This not only shows the current usage statistics, but also trends as to how traffic sources are changing.

Gallery: Church Websites

Astrid Salim, Creative Director

Today I showed the team a showcase of church websites that is compiled by Vandelay Design. Clean and simple with a touch of grungy texture detail is a common trend that I saw throughout the list here. The target audience of these websites is likely to be younger generation. But be careful not to overuse the grunge texture because it can look cliche. I like how most of the websites look simple and clean, making them user friendly. I also like the use of WordPress for some of these websites. It encourages more interaction and strengthens the social aspect of the church, which works well for their target audience.

Boosting the Crowd

Jeff Burkholder, Inbound Marketing Analyst

I brought to items to the group this week. First was information about a new Twitter statistic site called Crowdbooster. Like Klout, this site takes a look at your tweets and tells you how influential you are. This version of that idea, though, is much more graphical in nature, and lets you see at a glance how many people have retweeted your tweets, and how many people have seen those retweeted tweets. The service is still in beta, so not everything is completely solid. There’s a feature called, “Follow Builder”, which helps you find others who could be interested in your tweets by entering keywords, but it’s a bit glitchy yet, and they’re currently soliciting comments for a reporting system down the road. Otherwise, it looks like a potentially useful tool.

I also talked to the team about how Google has revised their algorithm largely due to the actions of one man. Read more here and be sure to check out the NY Times article referenced as well.

When Faith Gets Social

Steve Wolgemuth, Principal

My participation in this week’s Resource Friday was very different from previous weeks, as I cited a very different type of source than I typically use (like books, online articles and blogs). I referenced a recent experience that has truly rocked my world. Three weeks ago when my wife was diagnosed with breast cancer, my awesome team at YDOP met behind my back and organized what would become an incredible blessing to my family. You guessed it – a blog: WeCareForLori.com. Because of my wife’s current and my past involvement in the dressage industry (an equestrian sport), a very popular website, Dressage Daily picked up the story, bringing exposure to the site from a lifetime of fellow equestrians from around the world. Meanwhile, churches wanting to support us pushed out the link and garnered more thoughts and prayers than we could have imagined. That’s where, to me, it got really interesting — when faith moved across social networking.

What is fascinating is that “church people” have language they’ve learned to use among themselves. Others who aren’t oriented this way or haven’t been raised in this type of culture may feel alienated or confused when they read this sort of thing. When faith goes social, I believe “religious folk” (who have ears to hear) have a new classroom to learn to communicate more carefully and sensitively.

At the same time, faith has a new opportunity to express it’s power — at least that’s what happened in our case. As friends, family and complete strangers came along on our horrible cancer journey via this blog, we saw honest expressions of faith in God from so many people. And, God obviously moved in so many people that we were overwhelmed. Cards, gifts, volunteers, meals, encouragement and more than 300 visits a day to the website were driven by a Force, whose power was best represented in a video of my wife the night before surgery. It was obvious that something more than human determination was behind all of this. I believe that a blog like WeCareForLori was like a magnifying glass is to the sun. It concentrated the love that comes from above through the hearts of so many people that came together — and focused it directly on our family at the worst of times. It demonstrated the power of when faith gets social.

After this week’s flurry of activity serving our clients, we all relished the chance to sit down together to enjoy some stromboli, and some time to teach each other more about our respective fields of expertise.

Twitter Shortening and Dark-Roasted Google

Daniel Klotz, Social Media Strategist

I shared with the YDOP team that Twitter is testing a system that will shrink all URLs in all tweets. Even URLs already shortened with a service like bit.ly (or kudz.us, if you read last week’s post), Twitter will shrink the link to one that uses their new short domain, t.co. Some links, however, will only appear as shortened versions of the URL—Twitter uses the example of amazon.com/Delivering-. While Twitter is thinking of this as a way to protect users from malicious links, on the whole I think this will be bad for our clients who are heavy users of Twitter for sharing links to content on the Web.

This week Google announced that the latest iteration of its search system, Caffeine, is now fully implemented for all users around the world. Caffeine puts a high emphasis on content that is recent and up-to-date. Google also began a pilot test of including twitter updates in AdWords advertisements.

Sysomos announced the results of a study that showed, among other things, that the majority of bloggers are age 21 to 35, about evenly split between men and women. Four percent of all bloggers worldwide are based in Pennsylvania.

Facebook Insights and Safari Reader

Jeff Burkholder, Engineer/Analyst

I decided to take a break this week from the book I’d been reading for my Resource Friday materials, and instead talked a little bit about Facebook’s revamped Insights platform. This was introduced at Facebook’s f8 conference back in April, but finally went live this week. Largely, Facebook is trying to position themselves similarly to Google’s Analytics, and allow website owners to get (anonymized) demographic data about their visitors.

I also talked about the “Reader” feature in the new 5.0 release of Apple’s Safari web-browser. With this feature, depending on what sites they browse, visitors may see a “Reader” icon in the address bar. Upon clicking that, an overlay window appears that shows the plaintext of the article, along with any specifically-related pictures, but removing all the other clutter from the page. It’s a really slick idea and implementation. I referred to it as a sort-of “TIVO” version of websites, in that it doesn’t delete ads and the like, but makes it easier to ignore them.

Facebook APIs

Mike Newswanger, Programmer

This week I taught about some of the capabilities of the Facebook API for marketing strategies and application development. The API can be used for communication with potential clients, expanding your client base through recommendations and suggestions by current clients, and connecting the data on your site with your clients.

The API can be implemented in different ways, and its functionality can be quickly deployed. For example, the like buttons that you see on many sites can be added to your page to allow Facebook users to help spread knowledge about products offered.

A Few of My Favorite Sites

Astrid Salim, Creative Director

I love looking at some great website designs out there for inspiration. So this Friday, I picked and shared some of the websites that I like and talked about what it is that makes them beautiful.

I can’t tell you enough about how I love simple, clean and contemporary design. Clean design is really easy on the eye. It is easy to navigate. Today I shared some of the websites that are using a grid system to convey simple, clean, contemporary design. Some of the examples are Davroc, Jam Restaurant and SD Workz. Simple and clean grid design makes the website clear, organized, and again, easy to navigate. They really prove that the grid is not only important in print design, but also essential in web design. With some added punches of color and subtle texture, those websites proves that a simple grid-based design doesn’t have to be boring.

People who want friendlier design can also get a clean design by adding subtle texture. Freedom Tree Farms website proves how powerful a subtle texture can be. But keep in mind, things are good in moderation, including the use of texture.

Faith Meets Science

Jonathan Arndt, Programmer

As YDOP is working on the Knights of the 21st Century website, it seem suitable to share information on some mobile applications that are currently being used for men’s ministry and discipleship.

There are three specific services from Back to the Bible that are available for your mobile phone, and computer.
– 411God is a telephone call. A 1 minute long message, everyday at a pre-scheduled time.
– SMC, See Me Change, is a text message. Just a simple Bible verse. Everyday. And you’re even encouraged to text back to share how you applied this verse in your life.
– Nudge is an E-mail message. Everyday. Short devotionals written by men and women who are in similar life-stages as yourself.

More information about these discipleship tools can be found at

http://www.411god.net/lbc/