What’s the Buzz?

Are you playing the numbers game on the web? Even blogging  bishops have been known to need a nightly peek at their stats to make sure that the blog or twitterstream is on the up. Just like most clergy automatically do a headcount at services and hope it’s up not down (if it’s at their church; and … perish the thought).

Unlike with live congregations, there’s such a footfall though the web that just being there means that your site or flock slowly grows, I think. Even total rubbish seems to have attractions. I suppose I want to affirm that just being there, however many people show up, is also important for real-life churches. Waterden that I reported on yesterday for instance has tiny attendances. But it really matters spiritually that there are still points like that in our striving world.

But then again, I am also not at all afraid to bang on about the importance of church growth – and that includes bums on seats. If we mean what we say about Your Kingdom Come on Earth, and have a belief that God’s will is that all his creation is redeemed, then there is a lot of point in our sharing that will and asking ourselves how we can be sharing in the work. Including bringing individual people to faith.

Now there are ways of going about this, … and there are ways. All too often the assumption that the only way of sharing in God’s work here is doing things which embarrass either us or the people we are talking to puts us off doing anything. Anyone who works in mission or evangelism has seen this, but also knows there are plenty of other ways to do business. Try for instance www.evangelism.net and for an amazing world-wide booklist http://www.anglicancommunion.org/ministry/mission/commissions/missio/g_doc.cfm.

But back to the web-world. This thought was sparked off by listening to the rather funny BBC radio programme Electric Ink as I was driving yesterday. It’s a satirical comedy by Alistair Beaton in which old hacks meet new media in the newspaper industry. In Episode 5 (Listen now) Freddy introduces buzzwords to the paper’s web site. Get those much-searched words into your text and the hit-rate rockets. Needless to say most of the words were not ones normally in the vocabulary of respectable journalists, nor ones that I will repeat here.

Or should I? Perhaps making the occasional reference to free grace offered to those in the grip of drugs might make my Google-count climb. And no doubt it is tres jolie that I call my satnav voice angelina.

What I will do, by way of both information and experiment, is list some of most searched-for terms – and watch to see if this particular post attracts more attention than usual … All the information is from Google itself.

Terms that are rising fast right now
1. jonas salk
2. staple center
3. palmbeachpost
4. smallpox vaccine
5. charles drew
6. staplescenter
7. least common multiple
8. authorize.net down
9. wimbledon semi finals live
10. edward jenner
11. staples center los angeles
12. all recipes
13. doug pitt
14. wimbledon tv coverage
15. sarah palin
16. michael jackson memorial tickets
17. wimbledon finals 2009
18. rebecca corry
19. fireworks shows
20. semi charmed life lyrics

Fastest Rising  terms in 2008 in the UK
iplayer
facebook
iphone
youtube
yahoo mail
large hadron collider
obama
friv
jogos
wiki

Most Popular in 2008 in the UK
facebook
bbc
youtube
ebay
games
news
hotmail
bebo
yahoo
jobs

Filed under: Technology, Thoughts for the Day , BBC, bebo, ebay, Facebook, games, Google, hotmail, jobs, news, yahoo, Youtube