This weekend, the Facebook page of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (“the Mormons”) passed 200,000 fans.

Interested in getting started on Facebook yourself? Need to teach someone else how to get started? Watch this easy-to-understand video on how to use Facebook. It’s a simple tutorial to help grandparents (or anyone else) create a profile on Facebook, and upload a profile picture

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BYU Professor Daniel Peterson and Scott Gordon FAIR have launched a new website with the testimonies of Mormon scholars: Mormon Scholars Testify. Bro. Peterson explained his rationale to the Church News:

“I hope to gather up testimonies from, well, Mormon scholars,” Brother Peterson said. “I’m trying, thereby, to comply with a request made about a year ago by Elder M. Russell Ballard and reiterated by other authors in the October Ensign that we use the Internet as a way of sharing our testimonies of the gospel.” (via LDS Church News)

Bro. Peterson suggested this could be one of many “vertical” websites highlighting the testimonies of Church members:

“I think there ought to be similar on-line collections of testimonies from athletes, executives, farmers, housewives, morticians, retirees, chess players, stamp collectors, everybody. The possibilities are endless, and I hope many others will take to the Web with their expressions of faith.” (ibid.)

More Good Foundation’s website Mormons Believe, or the yet-to-be-built Why I Believe, announced at the Boston singles conference, could be the home for these many testimonies, organized by profession, location, interest, or some other attribute.

Mormon.org itself has a few select testimonies and could conceivably offer a repository of testimonies someday.

24 Hour Fitness has a website with the stories of members whose lives have improved through fitness. It includes categories such as life improvement, recovery, athletic, and social. Imagine a similar website for the stories of people whose lives have been blessed by the Gospel in even broader and more lasting ways.

CORRECTION (Jan 18, 2010): As Daniel Peterson mentions in the comment below, this website is not affiliated with FAIR.

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Posts over the last few weeks have talked about using social media for sharing the gospel and staying connected with friends. But how do you decide which social media site(s) to use? Below is a quick review of each of the major social platforms.

Facebook

• Primarily used for: connecting
• Primary demographic: 25 to 45
• Ideal fit for: entertainment, lifestyle brands, and non-profits
• Biggest opportunity: building fans
• Biggest challenge: few appreciate Facebook advertising
• Metrics: fans, comments, likes, wall posts
• Helpful tools: Lexicon, ad interface, applications, analytics, connect, etc.

MySpace

• Primarily used for: connecting
• Primary demographic: 15 to 25
• Ideal fit for: music and entertainment
• Biggest opportunity: providing music samples
• Biggest challenges: noisy; losing market share quickly
• Metrics: friends, favorites, groups, impressions
• Helpful tools: Open Platform, MyApps, MySpace Toolbox

LinkedIn

• Primarily used for: connecting
• Primary demographic: 35 to 55
• Ideal fit for: service providers, industry associations
• Biggest opportunity: creating thought leadership via Q&A and Groups
• Biggest challenge: time commitment
• Metrics: profile connections, best answers, group members, discussions
• Helpful tools: Applications, Salesforce plug-in

Blogs

• Primarily used for: creating
• Primary demographic: 35 to 55
• Ideal fit for: about anything
• Biggest opportunity: develop thought-leadership
• Biggest challenge: requires significant resources over time
• Metrics: feed subscribers, comments, visits, unique visitors, page views, Technorati rank, pingbacks, inbound links, visibility in search engines
• Helpful tools: WordPress plug-ins

Twitter

• Primarily used for: creating (microblogging)
• Primary demographic: 35 to 45
• Ideal fit for: service industry, sharing ideas
• Biggest opportunity: customer service, consumer insight, sales and marketing
• Biggest challenges: noisy; reliability issues; platform limitations
• Metrics: followers, @ replies, retweets, direct messages, custom hashtags
• Helpful tools: BingTweets, TweetBeep, TweetDeck, HootSuite, CoTweet, Mr. Tweet, Twitalyzer, blog plug-ins

YouTube

• Primarily used for: creating, sharing, voting
• Primary demographic: 25 to 45
• Ideal fit for: big brands and entertainment
• Biggest opportunity: creating viral content
• Biggest challenges: noise; conversions
• Metrics: views, comments, subscribers, ratings
• Helpful tools: TubeMogul, YouTube Insight

Adapted from Kent Lewis

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Social networks continue to climb in popularity around the world. The study “Power to the People: Social Media Tracker” found that the percentage of US Internet users with a social network profile grew 16% from 2008 to 2009. Today, 59% of active Web users (those with access at least every other day) reported having a profile.

eMarketer estimates that 44.2% of all Internet users in the US use a social network at least monthly.

But the US is far from tops in social networking activity. Seven other countries polled had higher percentages of Internet users with a social network profile. Russia, which came in first place, also had one of the fastest growth rates; it has grown from 23% in 2006 to over 85% in 2009.

Worldwide, 62.5% of active Internet users aged 16-54 have a social network profile. In addition, 71.1% have visited a friend’s profile page.

The study also sees people starting to focus their digital life around single networks (like Facebook), rather than around many specialized tools with social features (like blogging and photo-sharing sites). They tend to like social networks that consolidate multiple social media in a single place.

The chart below shows the most popular activities on social networks.

Messaging friends, uploading photos, and finding old friends are the 3 most popular activities. But also notice the variety of other activities that are also quite popular.

So, how do you use social networks? How can you ensure they are more helpful than a waste of time? I’m just learning how to filter and be selective with my Facebook page. For me, the trick is how to get updates from people I want to stay in contact with, without having to wade through the babble from all 318 of my friends.

A friend just posted the following on Facebook: “They say that 40% of tweets are just babble. I don’t think so. BTW, I just ate breakfast. Thought you would want to know.”

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Earlier this month we informed you that LDSMediaTalk set up a page on Facebook and over a hundred of you became fans of that page.

To enhance the experience, we have now set up a new page at facebook.com/ldsmediatalk. This new page will automatically display new  posts from the LDSMediaTalk blog. Some users may find this an easier way to follow the LDSMediaTalk blog.

We invite you to become friends with the new LDSMediaTalk page on Facebook. You can then choose whether to have new blog posts appear on your personal Facebook page.

We invite you to become a fan of the with the new LDSMediaTalk page on Facebook. You can then choose whether to have new blog posts appear on your personal Facebook page.

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This morning Danny Sullivan (@dannysullivan) tweeted about A Day in the Life of a Twintern. The article immediately caught my eye since it’s a story about Pizza Hut’s first official “twintern” – Alexa Robinson.

As a twintern – “an intern in charge of their companies’ Twitter feeds” – Robinson spends the majority of her time on Twitter “sending out messages about special promotions, responding to customer complaints, and trolling Twitter for mentions of Pizza Hut.” According to Caitlin McDevitt:

Despite a lack of in-house experience—she worked for only one day in a Pizza Hut restaurant—Robinson seems to be doing a fine job thus far. She has increased Pizza Hut’s Twitter followers from 3,000 to more than 13,000 and successfully executed a sales promotion over the Fourth of July weekend. And despite having only been on the job for a month, she seems well-informed about the company offerings. In response to a customer inquiry, she tweeted on Tuesday: “Currently the Stuffed Pizza Rolls are only available with pepperoni. I’ll keep you posted if anything changes.”

Who are some of your favorite LDS twitterers you follow?

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LDSMediaTalk how has a page on Facebook. See the discussion tab to share ideas on what you’d like to see on LDSMediaTalk. Become a fan to receive periodic updates.

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In May 2009, Facebook became the most popular US social networking site, just barely surpassing MySpace’s number of unique visitors.

Facebook now allows you to choose a username for your user page. For example, rather than the Web address (URL)being a randomly-assigned number like “id=592952074,” it can now be a name  of your choosing, like facebook.com/larry.richman. 

This makes it much easier to share with others your profile or some other Facebook page in a more personal way. It also adds authenticity and helps create a trusted environment because the identity of the people and things on Facebook will be more clear.

While the Church is still developing a strategy on how to use Facebook appropriately, preliminary pages have been created for the following:

• The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints on Facebook
• LDS Newsroom (facebook.com/LDSNewsroom)
• Liahona magazine (facebook.com/liahona.magazine)
• Ensign magazine (facebook.com/ensign.magazine)
• New Era magazine (facebook.com/newera.magazine)
• Friend magazine (facebook.com/friend.magazine)

You’ll notice that we’ve establish an easy username for each page, except for the main Church page. That will be set up once Facebook provides instructions to us and releases the names reserved around trademarks, such as “Mormon.”

To claim your own username (sometimes called “vanity URL”), visit facebook.com/username. Usernames can only contain romanized letters, numbers, and periods–no hypens or underscores. Think carefully about the username you choose. Once it’s been selected, you won’t be able to change or transfer it.

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If you haven’t added the LDS App on Facebook, you should check it out. It allows you to include on Facebook some of your LDS interests and background. You have the option whether or not to include the information on your personal profile.

New features:

• Share your mission, with dates and experiences, and see other friends from your mission
• Share the temple you were married (or would like to be married). Include the date you were sealed.
• Share gospel artwork on your profile and through messages.
• Group your favorite scriptures together and share your thoughts on them.
• Play some scripture mastery games.
• Reference the help section which overviews all the features.

The LDS App was created by the More Good Foundation. The LDS App now has 39,500 members.

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Every day, the social networking giant Facebook is becoming a larger part of the overall Internet experience. More than 175 million people have joined since its founding in 2005, and its users contribute millions of pieces of content every day.

Every day in February 2009, Facebook users averaged over 3 billion minutes on the site. They updated their status 15 million times and became “fans” of a particular company, brand, product or person 3.5 million times a day.

US residents spent more time on Facebook than on any other Web site, beating out the previous leader Yahoo! Source: eMarketer

You may also be interested in an article in yesterday’s USA Today that explains that social networking is fast becoming a staple for a growing number of adults.

While the Church is still developing a strategy on how to use Facebook appropriately, a preliminary page has been created for the Church, as well as for the Liahona, Ensign, New Era, and Friend magazines.

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