Got a Spare Billion? Buy YouTube August 27, 2006
Posted by Steve in : Weblog , add a commentAs a church leader, I am fascinated by the incredible migration of time and people’s attention to the social networking sites and the personal film clip sites like YouTube. What is it in our human nature that drives people to spend hours on the computer in social networking sites? So imagine my reaction when I read an interesting article today looking at what YouTube might be worth — it estimates its current market value based off a Sony acquisition of a tiny rival could be in excess of $1 billion…….
“The viral video space is so hot right now; it’s like Hansel from the movie ‘Zoolander,’” said Aram Sinnreich, managing partner of RadarResearch, referring to the 2001 comedy about competition in the modeling business. “I wouldn’t be surprised to see (online video market leader) YouTube receive a bid of $1 billion. Whether the company is worth it is another question.”
Marshall Kirkpatrick at TechCrunch puts the worth of YouTube even higher:
However, the Grouper acquisition price is out of whack when compared to other recent video acquisitions. US Comscore data says Grouper had about 542,000 unique visitors in July 2006, compared to YouTube’s 16 million. Viacom’s recent acquisitions of iFilm (December 2005, 3.3 million U.S. uniques) and Atom/Shockwave (August 2006, 1.3 million U.S. uniques) for $50 million and $200 million, respectively suggest a per-unique-visitor valuation of $15-$20. Grouper’s per-unique-visitor valuation, by comparision, is roughly $70 - $120, depending on whether you look at June or July 2006 data.
It’s hard to use Comscore data for meaningful analysis as it doesn’t necessarily reflect total videos uploaded or viewed, and doesn’t reflect videos embedded on third party sites. I also only have U.S. Comscore data. However, noting those issues, the $65 million valuation on Grouper suggests a YouTube valuation of around $2 billion.
Just Who Does Go to Hell? August 17, 2006
Posted by Steve in : Weblog, Breaking News, Church , add a commentLast week, MSNBC did a piece on people’s attitudes about hell.
The correspondent stated that there are no more central questions for every single one of us than the questions about belief. Is there a God? Is there life after death, is there a heaven, or hell? His data showed that Americans, as we all know by now, are far more likely than, say, Europeans, to answer those questions in the affirmative. A Harris poll of our attitudes conducted a few years ago found that 94 percent of American adults believe in God, 89 percent in heaven and 73 percent in hell. For professing Christians, those numbers are even higher.
But more interesting were the answers to the question…just exactly who is going to go to hell? Hell is for other people! Fully three-quarters of survey participants felt pretty sure they will be going to heaven when they die, while just 2 percent expected they would wind up in hell. WOW!
MSNBC then asked thier readers to take the following questions — with more than 17,000 answers, here is how people responded:
R & R in the Big D August 16, 2006
Posted by Steve in : Weblog , 1 comment so farFolks –
It is time to take the Tour de France, Floyd Landis, the Leadership Summit at Willow Creek, the middle east, Lebanon, Hezbollah, blogging, ministry planning, and church planting and put them on the back burner for a week’s rest in Dallas, compliment of my parents, who reside in McKinney….See you on the flip side.
City Changing Prayer August 15, 2006
Posted by Steve in : Weblog , add a commentJust finished a great read called “City Changing Prayer” by Debra and Frank Green. The subtitle for this book is “Insights From Manchester’s Impacting City Wide Prayer Movement”. Frank and Debra Green have written this book where they describe the journey of how they implemented radical prayer initiatives and joined forces with other ministries that wanted to transform the Manchester area.
This book tells the story of the Manchester Prayer Network from the start – with chapters by Debra and her husband Frank Green. This book stands as a testament that says “it can be done – in England!” Despite all the same problems that any of us would find in our own communities, Debra and Frank Green set up a huge network of prayer over Manchester that has been instrumental in bringing reductions in crime and a release of God’s Spirit. Ministries have come to life and are empowered as these Christian leaders fro mvarious denominations and backgrounds pray together.
Don’t look for a manual telling you three easy steps to bring revival to your City. The principles of united prayer are there, but you need to dig them out rather than reading a simple checklist. Many things that she discusses are things we all can use as we think about prayer in our cities. If you don’t have groups of Christian leaders in your town or city getting together regularly for real prayer sessions then you need to read this book. If you already have this – you should still read the book, because it will show you the potential of the doorway you have walked through.
Debra did an interview with a journalist and said this:
What would you say are five keys to establishing a prayer movement in a city that will make a big impact?
The five most important keys to city-changing prayer are:
- The prayer of agreement. Unity is a huge key. Get people and churches together to pray about community issues.
- Develop a positive attitude towards your city. Don’t sit in judgement, learn to love your city!
- Specific and targeted prayer ie towards crime reduction or other specific sectors of your community.
- Publish your answers to prayer!! People will pray more if you do.
- Hold interesting prayer meetings, which are creative, using a variety of prayer styles, and keep them fast moving. Go for excellence in terms of publicity, presentation and materials.
Move over Google Earth…. August 13, 2006
Posted by Steve in : Weblog, Technology , add a commentFirst, there was Mapquest….Then Keyhole….which became Google Earth. But like everything these days, the power continues to shift to the individual user. Now comes Wikimapia, which was created by Alexandre Koriakine and Evgeniy Saveliev, inspired by Google maps and Wikipedia. WARNING - THIS SITE IS ADDICTING!! This will be a good, FREE way for churches to get their message out…….Check out the Park Community Church links on Wikimapia at 1001 N Crosby and 108 W Germania Place!
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The Mall Church - Good Idea? August 10, 2006
Posted by Steve in : Weblog, Church, Methods & Strategies , add a commentAs the Executive Pastor for a good-sized church in Chicago and a serial entrepreneur (see About Steve), I am always searching for different ways people are using to present the Gospel…to get the message of God’s love through His son Jesus Christ.I now see that there is a church which is being started at a mall in San Jose CA……Now, that is unique. Not too surprisingly, its called “MallChurch“. Here is their blog. I guess the strategy is to embrace our insatiable consumerism, and then figure out ways to work with it. (more…)
50 Most Influential Churches August 9, 2006
Posted by Steve in : Weblog, Church , add a commentOnce again, the Christian community ventures into a weird area with the annual rankings of the “50 Most Influential Churches” list, which recently came out from The Church Report. I am not sure what rankings do for the church and its leaders (given that the message is the centrality and life-changing message of the Gospel) and I don’t know what influential means — I think God works in the local church and the local church responds to the people that God has entrusted to their particular care. Maybe influence has more to do with “relevancy,” marketing, “innovation,” “buzz” and size than Biblical preaching. This sort of list appears to be an outward look at a church’s size— hard to tell whether these congregations are influencing their local neighborhoods, communities and cities. How are they doing with local issues, especially justice and mercy ministries? How are they impacting the world? How do they do in overseas missions? Not easy to tell. (more…)
Live from Chicago: Lollapalooza! August 6, 2006
Posted by Steve in : Weblog, The City, Chicago , 1 comment so farSue and I got my mother-in-law to come in a watch the four kids, and off we went for a day of Lollapalooza, a terrific 3-day band-fest in Grant Park on the lakefront in Chicago. After a long and ill-starred history, Lollapalooza seems to be settling in for a great ride in Chicago, and this was a first-class presentation of music by Chicago — well done!
After a great Saturday night concert by Kanye West, Sunday held high hopes for us as we settled in to hear Matisyahu, Poi Dog Pondering, Blues Traveller, Red Hot Chili Peppers and our favorite (because Jeff Tweedy is our neighbor) Wilco. (more…)
Blast from the Past — YouTube: The Evolution of Dance August 4, 2006
Posted by Steve in : Weblog , add a commentYouTube: The Evolution of Dance: Judson Laipply
Wow! This 6 minutes of pure fun brings back many memories of trying to have the latest dance moves. How many of these can you say you have done yourself? Thank you Judson!
Podcasting for Churches: Lessons from the Field August 4, 2006
Posted by Steve in : Uncategorized, Weblog, Inside Park, Technology , add a commentAbout six months ago, the communications team that I am a part of at Park Community Church began to set out on a journey to update our website. Key elements of the update included a new home page, an online calendar, a summary of events that we call “the Quick Six” and the ability to offer people multiple ways to get our Sunday message.
Today I’d like to report on our success to date. On the multi-message delivery methods, we revised our audio messages and created video files of each Sunday. We have found that Sony Sound Forge (audio) and Sony Vegas 6 (video) have given us unbelieveably clear sound and video with smaller files.
We relaunched the new site on June 15th and have tracked our website downloads since then. We were only able to install a statistics package on our Feedburner feed 7 days ago. Here are the statistics…………..
From the website:
1,607 downloads in 7 weeks, almost evenly split audio versus video, which work out to an average of 229 website downloads per week
From I-Tunes:
157 downloads in seven days
The lessons that we have been learning:
People want different venues to get their message. We know that people check out our church by listening to our messages. We know that people who miss a Sunday listen or view the message via the website. We also know that others who used to go to Park get the message that way.
If you build it, they will come. We spent a considerable amount of time and effort to design and develop the message downloading, (including sound and video quality) not knowing whether anyone would utilize the technology. Our website users showed us that they appreciate easy and useful information.
Building Permit In Hand! August 3, 2006
Posted by Steve in : Weblog, The City, Chicago, Church Construction , add a commentWE RECEIVED OUR PERMIT TODAY! Praise God! In just over four months, we maneuvered our way through the labyrinth called the City of Chicago Department of Construction and Permits and now have our construction permit! …stay tuned as the building process begins to get exciting! Click here to learn more about the new building. Also, please save the date for the official groundbreaking ceremony for the new building at 1001 N. Crosby, which will be combined with our special monthly event, The Gathering, on Thursday September 14. Join us in an evening of praise and worship for all that God has done and will continue to do in this world- class city!
