Gospel for Asia

About a year ago, a friend of mine let me borrow this book, Revolution in World Missions by Dr. K.P. Yohannan. I was so moved by his desire to reach the unreached people of Asia for Christ that I bought a copy for myself. Now you can get a copy of free!

I highly recommend this book. I hope you read it and see how God is using sponsors in the U.S. to enable local missionaries in India and all of Asia to share the God's love with people who have been shunned and forgotten by the rest of the world. We get to be part of the amazing work God is doing!

Acts 20:24

Tiffany Lim

"Aspiring doctor by day, Songwriter by night, Christ-follower 24/7"

Outcompeting the Social Giant - Facebook

Ah yes, Facebook. The site that trumps all. Myspace, Friendster, Twitter, you name it. Facebook is still the biggest (and arguably the best) of all social networking sites. Facebook addicts know how amazingly time-consuming it can be. And all Facebook users look upon the select few who have resisted joining this peer pressured giant with awe and wonder.

As much as I like to use Facebook, our blog post assignment for this week is to propose ways to outcompete Facebook. So, here goes:

If I were a business competing against Facebook, I would...

...be up front about privacy with my users. Facebook is known for changing the default privacy settings on everyone's Facebook account with very little to no notice to the user. One of the funniest examples of this is when nearly 300 personal photos of Facebook founder, Mark Zuckerberg went public when they switched privacy settings. People need to know exactly who has access to their profiles at all times. This isn't possible when the company suddenly changes their privacy settings, oftentimes without user knowledge.

...capitalize on advertisement, not market research. Sure, Facebook may give themselves permission to sell data from our profiles in some tiny black font in their Terms and Conditions. But who reads those word-for-word anyways, other than lawyers and the extremely cautious? People need to know that they can trust those who develop and manage the social networking sites they use, and that means not selling information about them to different companies unless that part of the deal has been made VERY clear to the user, and the user has given them permission.

...allow people to "Follow" their friends. Facebook has a news feed that enables users to "Hide" certain people or applications or pages, but they do not have a way to choose specifically who or what shows up in your feeds. People like to choose the news they get.

...add voice and video chat capabilities, and also easily visible privacy settings that let users choose who can call them and who cannot. This could potentially increase revenue by increasing the time people spend on the social networking site, and thus increase advertising time.

...add TV shows and movies along with the ability to see what your friends are watching, or even watch with them and chat while you're watching. This would once again increase advertising space and time, as well as help users strengthen their relationships.

Facebook has an incredible number of users, but they have done a few things that make their user unhappy and uneasy. In the Facebook competitor social networking site, I would address those privacy concerns and add features that facilitate more interaction between friends in order to increase the average amount of time they spend active on the site each day and to increase the overall number of users.

Social interaction over internet and gaming

In just about the past decade, Youtube, Facebook, and eBay have revolutionized the way people use the internet. People used to be able to only look information up on the internet, posted by people who were tech savvy and at least knew how to write HTML. Youtube, Facebook, and eBay, which are all types of social networking or sharing sites, changed all that, allowing regular people who had an internet connection and a laptop to post information for the world to see. The difference between these sites lies in the types of social interaction they facilitate. Freespace 2, a video game I grew up with, also facilitated a social interaction much different from Youtube, Facebook, and eBay.

Youtube allows people to post videos of themselves and then receive feedback from other users. It provides people with a way to get their name out to the public, and more than a few budding musicians and actors have been "discovered" through Youtube.

Facebook provides a way for people to express themselves on the web to the people they meet out in the physical world. While video sharing has become a part of it, Facebook mostly lies within the realm of one's network, namely your friends, family, and school or company. Celebrities are an exception to this, but even then celebrities tend to have separate Facebook accounts for their friends versus their fans, or a separate Facebook page altogether.

eBay is particularly interesting, because it enables people to actually advertise, buy, sell, and bid over the internet. This is a buyer-seller social interaction that completely changed the way people use the internet. The internet was no longer just an information resource, but it became marketplace!

Freespace 2 also facilitates social interaction, but on a much smaller scale in comparison to the three sites mentioned above. Freespace 2 is a game about fighter pilots in space, but it is no an MMO. It can be played multiplayer with several computers over a network, enabling players to interact with others in the game, but not with a massive group of people. However, Freespace 2 and many games like it are interesting, because sites that came out of Freespace 2 have enabled a kind of massive social interaction to take place centered on the game.

These three sites and the video game all facilitate social interaction between people who could be physically distant, but virtually present.

Guest speaker Jeff Grubb

Jeff Grubb had several thoughts on transmedia properties that I greatly appreciated. The first point he made was that the first media platform in which a property is released influences the property across all other media platforms, driving it in different directions. The example he gave was the difference between comic books and novels. Comic books care about keeping the story alive while novels focus on important elements in good storytelling, including plot, character development, climax, and conclusion. This would make, for example, a movie based on a property originally from each of these media platforms very different in nature. Dragonlance, a property that Jeff Grubb had helped create, was an excellent example, showing the strengths of releasing a property on two media platforms instead of only one.

I also appreciated Jeff Grubb's insights on how transmedia properties are created and maintained. Some, like Pokemon, are intended to be transmedia right from the start, while others, like Star Wars, are backfilled in ordered to make them transmedia. In both cases, continuity in the overall narrative is fairly important, and keeping track of fandom is critical. Jeff Grubb very honestly shared with us the struggles of creating and maintaining transmedia worlds. In creating a shared world, property owners agree to a social contract inviting fans to share in ownership of the narrative and backstory. This can make changing the story or adding new things very difficult, as it entitles fans to have a say in how the world evolves.

After Jeff Grubb's talk, I now have a much deeper respect for people who make transmedia properties and the important and challenging work they do to create and maintain new worlds for fans to explore and be part of.

We Are the Body of Christ

A new song we wrote for our church retreat this year, but it ended up being runner up. That's okay! We hope it brings glory to God!

We are the Body of Christ

By Tiffany, Christopher, and Natasha Lim

We come to You laying our sin at Your feet
Begging for mercy and grace
Selfish ambition and vain conceit
Have clouded our eyes from Your ways

We come to You thankful for what You've done
For giving Your flesh and Your blood
By faith we receive it, You make us one
United in spirit and love

Let us love just as You have loved us
Let us live as the children of God
Let us worship You with one accord
For we are the body of Christ

We rejoice and we suffer as one
Lives laid down for Your daughters and sons
In the hope of Your kingdom
We are the body of Christ

Three beat

researcher, musician, believer