Tag: facebook

A Christian Ethic of Blogging

museum-ethics

Blake Huggins shared his thoughts on this great quote from NT Wright…

“It really is high time we developed a Christian ethic of blogging. Bad temper is bad temper even in the apparent privacy of your own hard drive, and harsh and unjust words, when released into the wild, rampage around and do real damage. And as for the practice of saying mean an unjust things behind a pseudonym – well if I get a letter like that it goes straight in the bin. But the cyberspace equivalents of road rage don’t happen by accident. People who type vicious, angry, slanderous and inaccurate accusations do so because they feel their worldview to be under attack.” – NT Wright

Blake continues…

I couldn’t agree more. Blogging is at the same time both great and dangerous. It brings out the best and the worst in us. I am grateful for the many friends that I have made through this platform but I get really put out with the slander and hateful words that are put forth under the auspices of speaking the truth or defending the faith, or whatever else. As Christians we have a great opportunity to have rich and robust conversation and to model what charitable dialogue and respectful disagreement might look like. At our best we do that well, but sometimes we blow it.

I totally agree with both. I’ve twittered and blogged several times in the past about how difficult it would be to go a whole day without complaining about something online.
Continue reading A Christian Ethic of Blogging

Kingdom (social) media done well

Wanted to highlight a few folks/groups that have really impressed me as of late in putting social media to great use for The Kingdom.

The first is Trinity Wall Street.

While their site itself is not full of social media tools – @headphonaught passed along a great way they’re telling the story of Jesus the Messiah today.

From noon to 3 p.m. today they twittered the entire passion story of Jesus’ last hours on the cross via GroupTweet.

friend

via @tc226: This man befriends prostitutes, washes the feet of the poor – surely he is not a King but a blasphemer.

and the part of the story I’ve been meditating on today…

curtain

via @ServingGirl: Darkness and earthquake. I heard the curtain in the temple was torn in two. I wonder…

If you missed the story/play visit their twitter stream and scroll back to follow the story from the beginning.

Next, Church in the Cliff, which is just north of me in Oak Cliff has launched their new site built around lots of great social media tools.

citc

The site itself is limited in wordy information. Other than the blog on the site, there’s only one other page on the site itself, a brief about us page.

The front page highlights their Flickr group, a tab/link to their Facebook group and one to their Twitter feed as well. They’re also using YouTube and a weekly Lifestream.

As a side note, Church in the Cliff has also come up with a great creative, transformative way to share God’s story this Resurrection season as well. They’ve put together an entire Stations of the Cross, using DART rail stations in Dallas. There’s a meditation guide on their site for folks and they’ll have their folks stationed at different areas to help add in the process. (although at the moment I can’t seem to find the PDF for downloading 🙁) .

Finally, I’d be amiss if I didn’t mention Mark Horvath (aka @hardlynormal and @invisiblepeople). We had Mark on our show a few weeks back. He’s putting social media to use in big ways, telling the stories of “invisible people” and the homeless and the media. Just look at his list of accounts:

So there are a few folks who are doing Kingdom (social) media well. Follow them, get inspiration and then find your own unique ways to tell God’s story.

Who else have you seen that’s putting social media to great use?

Facebook to users, ‘We own you!’

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The headlines a little misleading. They don’t claim they own you… just own all your content and everything else you post to their site.

They’ve changed a little paragraph in their terms of service to read ::

You are solely responsible for the User Content that you Post on or through the Facebook Service. You hereby grant Facebook an irrevocable, perpetual, non-exclusive, transferable, fully paid, worldwide license (with the right to sublicense) to (a) use, copy, publish, stream, store, retain, publicly perform or display, transmit, scan, reformat, modify, edit, frame, translate, excerpt, adapt, create derivative works and distribute (through multiple tiers), any User Content you (i) Post on or in connection with the Facebook Service or the promotion thereof subject only to your privacy settings or (ii) enable a user to Post, including by offering a Share Link on your website and (b) to use your name, likeness and image for any purpose, including commercial or advertising, each of (a) and (b) on or in connection with the Facebook Service or the promotion thereof. You represent and warrant that you have all rights and permissions to grant the foregoing licenses.

posted this earlier this evening on Facebook….

Facebook claims ownership of everything you post on their site

As of Feb 4, Facebook updated their terms of service to claim ownership of everything you post to their site — even after you might choose to cancel your account with them.

I’m not real happy with this at all. I’ve made 99% of my creative content available with a Creative Commons 3.0 license. That basically says that you’re free to use and share my content as long as you give me credit, don’t use it for commercial reasons (make money off of it) and you don’t change the licensing of it (i.e. Copyright the material).

But Facebook now claims they have ownership of everything I post on their site. That includes my recent cruise pictures, random videos of me and my friends eating sushi, pictures of my wedding and honeymoon as well as content we’ve created for the something beautiful podcast.

They claim they have the right to it all – and can do with it as they please. Of course now that there’s a lot of hub-bub going on, they finally clarified their changes as of 5 p.m. today — 8 days after they quietly changed their terms of service.

So, until they change their terms of service back to what they were, I won’t be posting any new content of my own to Facebook.

It’s still easily accessible to to those who would like to view it.

I have an RSS feed setup so you can have everything that automatically posts to Facebook already sent to your favorite RSS reader (I like Google — especially with their 10 guiding principles—including #6, “You can make money without doing evil.” Or, in short, “Don’t be evil.”) or you can have it emailed to you.

Simply visit my blog and click My Life in RSS and you’ll be able to subscribe to the same information I post here on Facebook.

Sorry for the hassle, but hopefully if more and more people are made aware and more and more people take action, something will be done.

For more information check out Steve Knight’s great blog post

And check out how other services like Google, Flickr and Twitter compare to Facebooks Terms of Service

And if you want to abandon Facebook all together but still have some fun online, check out these social networks :: encounterthis.ning.com and somethingbeautiful.ning.com

UPDATE: Here’s the license info from Ning.com…

Ning does not claim any ownership rights in Your Content. After posting Your Content, you continue to retain ownership of Your Content, and you continue to have the right to use and license Your Content in any way you choose. The Content that you upload to any Social Network needs to comply with the terms of this Agreement. At any point, you can take Your Content from Your Network and cancel your account and Ning does not retain any license rights except as provided below.

Sabatage

I tried posting this on Facebook but I was blocked for some reason… crazy – never got any warnings from them before.

GAME RULES:

1. Put your music player on shuffle (ALL MUSIC).
2. For each question, press the next button to get your answer.
3. YOU MUST WRITE THAT SONG NAME DOWN NO MATTER HOW SILLY IT SOUNDS!
4. Tag 10 friends who might enjoy doing the game as well as the person you got the game from.

IF SOMEONE SAYS “IS THIS OK” YOU SAY:
War Driving

WHAT WOULD BEST DESCRIBE YOUR PERSONALITY?
10,000 Children

WHAT IS YOUR MOTTO?
Wake Up

WHAT DO YOUR FRIENDS THINK OF YOU?
So Long, Marianne

WHAT DO YOU THINK ABOUT VERY OFTEN?
Beautiful

WHAT IS 2 + 2?
Amen, Amen

WHAT DO YOU THINK OF YOUR BEST FRIEND?
Burning Love

WHAT DO YOU THINK OF THE PERSON YOU LIKE?
I Will Never See the Sun

WHAT IS YOUR LIFE STORY?
Heaven’s Son

WHAT DO YOU WANT TO BE WHEN YOU GROW UP?
Blessed

WHAT DO YOU THINK WHEN YOU SEE THE PERSON YOU LIKE?
I Hear Your Voice

WHAT DO YOUR PARENTS THINK OF YOU?
I’ve Got You

WHAT WILL THEY PLAY AT YOUR FUNERAL?
Gone (New Mix)

WHAT IS YOUR BIGGEST SECRET?
Angels

WHAT DO YOU THINK OF YOUR FRIENDS?
Brainfreeze

WHAT’S THE WORST THING THAT COULD HAPPEN?
The Other Side

HOW WILL YOU DIE?
Tips for Sweet-Talking a Caribou

WHAT IS THE ONE THING YOU REGRET?
Everybody’s Singing Now

WHAT MAKES YOU LAUGH?
Why Don’t You Smile

WHAT MAKES YOU CRY?
Be Coo Mix

WILL YOU EVER GET MARRIED?
I am Free

DOES ANYONE LIKE YOU?
Say it Right and F the World

IF YOU COULD GO BACK IN TIME, WHAT WOULD YOU CHANGE?
I Walk the Line

WHAT HURTS RIGHT NOW?
Give My Love to Rose

WHAT WILL YOU POST THIS AS?
Sabatage

I’m too lazy to link to folks on the blog … but I tag Laurie, Dollye, Chris Allman, Trucker Frank, Thomas, Olwyn, Johny Laird, Tim Ellcey, Kara, Sara, B and for the heck of it — Shaun Groves.

web 2.0 rant

[rant]

So I love this idea of ambient intimacy. I love that I can get to know the folks in my community better and better through things like twitter, and facebook status updates and even their blogs.

I love that I can learn so much about people in short 140-character thoughts and quotes and comments throughout the day.

But I’m also getting annoyed that twitter is starting to become a “link dump” and/or a “read my new blog post!” @tonyjones twittered about this last week and I originally thought, well that’s a bit unkind – then I realized how many text messages (aka noise) I get throughout the day that are nothing more than “read my new blog post!”

I hate it because while I don’t mind seeing these things in facebook’s news feed or on my twitter friend feed I also see them in my RSS reader. So having an announcement about them show up on my cellphone as text messages really bugs me.

I know, I know – everyone just wants to plug their stuff — and honestly I’ve plugged a blog post here or there too. But I guess what gets me about the whole scenario is that for those folks I chose to go the extra mile in getting to know and actually opt-in to get their tweets sent to my cellphone (rather than just following them via the web). I don’t need a reminder to check your blog. And the fact that you automatically send me announcements every time you update your blog (rather than just highlighting the really good stuff) — or send a mass of tweets 3 or 4 times a day that share all your blog posts from the last several hours — makes me that less interested in following you or subscribing to your twitter feed. All the automatic posts just add to the noise and turn me off.

Am I making any sense? Maybe not — but I guess that’s why it’s a rant.

In full disclosure, the encounter blog and website are setup to automatically post a tweet anytime and every time a new blog post is updated and/or we post a new announcement or podcast to the website. So you can probably rant and rave about that and argue that I’m being biased (maybe this is where my rant/argument falls apart). However, I would argue in response that both the blog and the website are updated on a fairly limited basis and I’m/you’re not following the encounter twitter feed because you want to get to know someone better – it’s setup as a “news/announcement/prayer feed” for folks interested in encounter.

So there you have it. What say you?

[/rant]

I better post a link to this via twitter to be sure everyone knows about it and responds. 🙂

[rant continued]

update :: I also hate reading RSS feeds that don’t show the entire blog post. I don’t want to have to click “read more” or “this post continues elsewhere.” Just put the entire blog post in your RSS feed — PLEASE! I’m dumping a lot of RSS feeds right now that make me click on another link to read — it makes the entire point of RSS rather pointless.

[/rant]