A number of years ago, President Ezra Taft Benson gave a general conference talk entitled Flooding the Earth with the Book of Mormon using “electronic media and the mass distribution of the printed word.” After rereading that talk , I began to wonder how we could more fully take advantage of the many opportunities to flood the earth with the Book of Mormon using “electronic media”.

Electronic Media to New Media

Electronic media was a foreshadowing of today’s digital or new media. Last year, Elder Russell M. Ballard counseled, “I ask that you join the conversation by participating on the Internet, particularly the New Media, to share the gospel and to explain in simple, clear terms the message of the Restoration” (see Using New Media to Support the Work of the Church).

A Vision and a Challenge

In President Benson’s talk, he mentioned he had a “vision” of how the earth could be flooded with the Book of Mormon and issued a series of challenges to all Church members. In part, he said:

I challenge the homes of Israel to display on their walls great quotations and scenes from the Book of Mormon… I have a vision of artists putting into film, drama, literature, music, and paintings great themes and great characters from the Book of Mormon… I have a vision of the whole Church getting nearer to God by abiding by the precepts of the Book of Mormon. Indeed, I have a vision of flooding the earth with the Book of Mormon.

What If?

I wonder what would happen if not only the homes, but also the thousands of blogs and web sites in use by Church members could help achieve this goal. In that context, here’s a series of “what ifs” just to get people thinking about what could be done to more fully flood the earth with the Book of Mormon using new media.

1. What if someone hosted an LDS Widgets/Gadgets site and enlisted the support of thousands of interested developers (LDS Tech?) in creating gospel-oriented widgets and gadgets? For example, see Yahoo! Widgets, Google Gadgets, Windows Sidebar and Gadgets, Apple Dashboard Widgets, and many others.
2. Following President Benson’s line of thinking, what if some of these widgets/gadgets contained images, videos, and podcasts of favorite scriptures, talks, pictures, lessons, and many other categories that could be posted on personal blogs and web sites?
3. What if someone managed the Widgets/Gadgets forum and promoted this week’s “popular” widgets, “up and coming widgets”, “all time popular widgets”, etc.
4. What if someone was chartered with managing and marketing the site to provide basic assistance and encourage development around specific categories?
5. What would happen if static and rich media content was made available to a large Christian-oriented audience?
6. What if these widgets/gadgets targeted specific content areas on Church and “friends of the Church” web sites and enlisted bloggers and web site owners to make them available?

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In this instance “downloads” has a specific meaning, which I will explain, but you will see that the 1.2 million figure is actually a conservation estimate. By download, I don’t necessarily mean that the talk was saved to the user’s hard-drive, merely that the talk was read, watched or listened to. I have de-duplicated the figures, meaning that if the same person downloaded the same content multiple times, I only count it once. I also wanted to include the numbers from people watching archived content on the Move player, the new interactive video player the Church is using. Since the Move player is tracked differently, I had to do some additional finagling, but again, I erred on the conservative side and simply took unique visitors to the page. Bottom line, the actual number of archived talks read/listened to/watched is probably much higher than my 1.2 million, conservative estimate.

In the charts below, you will see various breakouts of the 1.2 million downloads of October 2008 General Conference archived content. The numbers are through the end of October.

Summary By Format: Read/Watch/Listen

Summary By Technology

Summary By Session

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About 19% of active Internet users in July 2008 were under age 18. (Source: Nielsen Online)

71% of US teens have a mobile phone. (Source: The Pew Internet & American Life Project)

59% own a desktop or laptop computer. (Source: The Pew Internet & American Life Project)

The following chart shows how they communicate.

Teens expect to be able to navigate between social networks, text messaging, instant messaging and virtual worlds seamlessly. They want messages sent by one means to be accessible in another. In fact, the distinctions between online, offline, and mobile communications are meaningless to many teens. They want simple means of communicating that are engaging.

The trick for most parents is to even understand what this fast-moving audience is doing.

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Photo used by permission from Craig C. Christensen

On the surface, it certainly appears like a golden opportunity to use cell phone technology to reach audiences the Church otherwise could not.  As an analyst, though, my nature is to approach the subject more cautiously and do a little more digging before I jump to such a conclusion. Here’s what my investigation has revealed:

You can’t say that half the world has a cell phone. There are about 6 billion people on the earth, so you might think 3 billion cell phones means 50% of people have cell phones, but this is not the case. The 3.3 billion figure does not take into account people with multiple mobile phones, so the actual number of mobile phone users is less than that. Hong Kong and much of Europe has mobile penetration of around 150%, meaning 1.5 mobile phones per person, on average across those populations. The Reuters report above further states that “59 countries have mobile penetration of over 100 percent.”

Mobile phone access does not equal mobile Internet access. The US has one of the highest rates of mobile Internet access, yet even here the Pew Research center says that only about three fourths of mobile phone users have mobile internet access.  Worldwide the percentage of cell phone users with Internet access is much lower.  Some estimates put it around 800 million, or 25%, of cell phones worldwide have Internet access. (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mobile_phone)

Not all mobile Internet access is a broadband mobile connection. Earlier this year, the GSM Association reported estimates of only 32 million broadband mobile connections worldwide, though it’s increasing at a very fast pace. This means that only a very small fraction, about 10%, of mobile users worldwide have broadband Internet on their phone. This does not prohibit slow-connection mobile Internet users from accessing content on their phones, but studies show much higher usage with broadband mobile connections.

What all this means for the Church’s use of mobile networks to further the Lord’s work is yet to be determined. On the surface, an aggressive mobile strategy seems like a no-brainer, but digging into the analysis reveals a very different story. What do you think the Church’s mobile strategy should be? What direction is your company headed with regard to mobile?

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One good source for answering questions about the Church is the Gospel Topics section of the Gospel Library on LDS.org. (You can also get there using the shortcut topics.lds.org.)

You may also be interested in Shaken Faith Syndrome, a new book published by the Foundation for Apologetic Information and Research (FAIR). Backed by extensive research and decades of experience dealing with anti-Mormon allegations, Michael Ash explores how we can be both critical thinkers and devout believers. The first half of the book offers suggestions on strengthening our intellectual foundations against challenging issues, including a greater understanding of the inherent limitations of science, history, and even the scriptures. The second half of the book exposes common anti-LDS tactics and engages some of the most frequent criticisms.

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What is OpenID?

According to the OpenID web site:

OpenID eliminates the need for multiple usernames across different websites, simplifying your online experience.

You get to choose the OpenID Provider that best meets your needs and most importantly that you trust. At the same time, your OpenID can stay with you, no matter which Provider you move to. And best of all, the OpenID technology is not proprietary and is completely free.

For businesses, this means a lower cost of password and account management, while drawing new web traffic. OpenID lowers user frustration by letting users have control of their login. (What is OpenID?)

PC World reports:

OpenID is a free framework that eliminates the need for multiple usernames across different websites. If you have a Microsoft Live Mail account, a Yahoo account, or a Google account, you can log in with those same credentials on other websites like AOL, MySpace, Plaxo, Zoho or Buxfer, without having to create a new account on any of these sites. (Google Moves to OpenID.)

I recently signed up with Verisign’s PIP, but you can get an account with any number of OpenID providers. Or use one of your existing accounts as mentioned above.

Although there are still hurdles to overcome, and some potential downsides, OpenID offers great utility towards a federated login. (See Google Joins OpenID Providers in Race Toward Federated Login and Google Revises its OpenID Implementation to Accept All Relying Parties.)

Here is the recent announcement on theSocialWeb.tv. Be prepared though - the video is 24 minutes!

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In addition to a 24-hour stream of music, you can also hear on-demand audio segments updated every week with interviews, sacred music, comedy, and more.

The station strives to  play music that resonates most deeply with Latter-Day Saint values, while at the same time introducing Latter-Day Saints to the artists who will shape tomorrow’s LDS music. The site also includes a discussion board where you can comment on the music or request songs you’d like to hear.

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Digg also promotes a conversation about the topic by allowing readers to comment on the article, see who voted on it, blog about it, or e-mail it to a friend.

Digg Alerter can help you keep track of your submissions. It sits in your system tray and alerts you whenever your stories are dugg or promoted to Digg’s front page.

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You may be interested to read an article in the Newsroom today, where the Church explains its involvement with moral and ethical issues. It also reminds us to be civil in our interractions. “We hope that now and in the future all parties involved in this issue will be well informed and act in a spirit of mutual respect and civility toward those with a different position. No one on any side of the question should be vilified, intimidated, harassed or subject to erroneous information.”

Today’s technology allows us to interact in ways never before possible and somtimes with a level of anonimity. Nevertheless, we need to remember to keep our conversations respectful, polite, and accurate. You may wish to refer to the helpful guidelines provided in the Newsroom about engaging in dialogue about the Church and also the guidelines on how to talk about doctrine.

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