See the Church’s new Web site for youth centered around the New Year’s celebration!
Go to the Web site A Brand New Year.
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A Brand New Year
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Sharing technology ideas for LDS parents and youth
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{ 8 comments… read them below or add one }
I’m not the target audience … but I must say this effort is a little disappointing. It reads like we’re trying too hard. It’s not hip so much as wannabe. And worse? While the call to action is clear, there is no benefit statement. None.
Sorry.
I had a hard time figuring out what the objective of this page is. Perhaps there should be a home page telling me why I am visiting the page. I was also getting errors in Safari, there may be some technical issues at work here too.
If you have no idea what this is all about, it’s probably best to read the Newsroom article from Dec 31st that explains it. Plus a few minutes reading, listening, watching and otherwise interacting with the site brings a wealth of information. It’s part of the 2009 Mutual theme.
Elder Holland’s address alone was worth the investment. I added the widget to my blog. It adds a lot and is an interesting way of getting visitors to my blog over to church sites. Good stuff. In my opinion, it meets the objective for this site – sharing technology ideas for LDS parents and youth.
And by the way, I don’t think it was overdone, over the top or a wannabe production. The benefit statement is the obvious joy that comes from living the gospel. Read the page on lds.org in the AP/YW section. You can’t miss the link – it’s right on the front page of lds.org today. Somebody went to a lot of trouble and effort to create this site. I, for one, appreciate it.
Tim: the site was shared with LDS Media Talk readers as a stand-alone offering — a “web site for youth”. My complaint and J.Peter’s is that the website requires prior knowledge to be meaningful. If the site is meant to have a life beyond being a scrapbook for the show’s performers, then it needs a lot of work. Starting with the front page. Visitors with no prior knowledge of the event around which the site is built have nothing to go on … and where little is offered, little is ventured.
As for your “the benefit statement is the obvious joy that comes from living the gospel” comment … hogswallop. The gospel isn’t even mentioned on the home page. Joy isn’t. We just have three kids paid to smile, plastered with random swooshes, circles, and disjointed text — an bald and inelegant play for the hearts of the Wii generation.
The gospel isn’t an easy sell, Tim. If it were, we’d be 130,000,000 strong and 80% activity. But we’re 13,000,000 strong with maybe 50% of those attending regularly. And we’ll need better work than this to make the leap forward.
And you inspired me, Tim, to visit LDS.org to see the link. And there’s more verbiage on LDS.org than on the ABNY site’s home page. And that one sentence made a WORLD of difference. Context is everything. Had I visited the ABNY site to find a simple statement about the site’s goals, it would have made all the difference. What kind of statement? Well, something like:
“On New Years Eve, kids around the world gathered to hear an Apostle of the Lord talk about the how a life centered on Christ is a life filled with meaning and joy. And this is our scrapbook … enjoy the night’s events again — or for the very first time! — using the links below.”
(Of course, their statement wouldn’t have featured so many typos.)
Hogswallop…now there’s a word you don’t see used everyday. But your point is well made. I guess if you hadn’t known anything about this new site and the purpose, it would be confusing to go there and not understand why it was created in the first place. I think your sample statement would have been helpful if it had been included.
My family was at an advantage in that one our nieces was in it. She said it was like “High School Musical” and was thoroughly impressed. We have known about it for a couple of months. I imagine Larry, who posted this, probably had that same familiarity and perhaps didn’t think that others might not know anything about it, but then, I can’t speak for Larry.
I find using arcane terms of disdain diffuses tension.