If you look in the right-hand sidebar, you’ll see a new section called “Quick Thoughts.” Let me quickly tell you the main points of how I’m doing this and then strategize for a moment about how something similar might be useful for churches.

I’m a member of a few different social websites (I’ve linked to my profiles in case you’re interested):

• LinkedIn (I use it 3-4 times a week)
• Facebook (I use it every day, usually multiple times)
• Plaxo Pulse (I don’t use it very much - someone invited me, so I signed up)
• Plurk (I just signed up a couple of days ago - I’ve heard good things about it)

Of course, there are many other social networks. I also have a Twitter account (until recently, I hardly ever used it).

Most of these social networks have a way you can update your status frequently throughout a day. Some use this feature, some don’t. The people who use it most effectively are not talking about what they ate for breakfast, but are sharing quick links, thoughts, etc. At the moment, I’m probably a little bit too much on the side of “what I ate for breakfast!”

The problem I’ve had in the past with using these status updates is that if I’m a member of five different services (and could be a member of many, many more), how am I going to update my status on all of them? I could end up doing nothing but updating my status!

Enter ping.fm — it’s a service in beta which allows you to create one status update that then gets pushed out to all of your social networks. Plus, they have a feature which allows me to use GoogleTalk to send their automatic service an update and that update then gets pushed out to all of my networks. Since I do all of my email in gmail now, it’s very convenient for me to just click on the pingdotfm chat partner (as I said, it’s actually an automated service) and write out a quick couple of lines for my status, hit the enter button, and know that all of my social networks will soon (some in a matter of seconds) have my updated status.

The final piece of the puzzle is that Expression Engine (the content management system I use) has a plugin that allows me to display my Twitter status updates in the sidebar — that’s what you’re seeing in the “Quick Thoughts” section (since I was experimenting initially, you’ll see a duplicate entry or two — the duplicate entries should go away in the next few days as I add more updates).

As I was telling a friend about what I had set up, I started thinking about how a church could use this. If the majority of a church’s members had Twitter accounts, their updates could be combined into a “congregational Twitter theme” which would allow everyone to stay on top of what other members were up to. I have a feeling this would provide an enhancement to face-to-face community and bring people in a congregation closer together.

Does anyone know of any churches doing something similar to this? Just curious.