Cursory Glance

Spiritual Enlightenment: How To Host Religious Services Through Twitter —

A discussion within the SocialTimes team stemming from recent news that Buddhist religious leader-in-exile, the Dalai Lama, was tweeting on Twitter led to the question of whether the microblogging service could be use to deliver religious services, and whether anyone was doing so. In this post we explore how Twitter can be used as a platform for religious services.

A search for “religious services on Twitter” in Google shows a few lists and one app:

1. WeFollow hosts a list of Twitter accounts that have some religious or spiritual flavor to them.
2. Twibes has a religion-spirituality Twitter list, but the user profiles listed seem to be of people rather than organizations.
3. If you’re interested in seeing in real-time what Twitter users are posting about “religion,” and from where, see Trendsmap’s geocoded map.

Some profiles from the first two lists, above, actually have a considerable number of followers. However, none of the them appear to be priests or ministers or nuns or monks, or what have you. The closest thing to religious services using Twitter, that I’ve found so far, is Gospelr, a Christian microblogging site. It’s built on the Twitter platform, and you can thus sign in with your Twitter account. Anyone can use it, and messages are sent to Twitter. You can browse tweets containing various spiritually-relevant keywords posted in tweets on Gospelr, as well as browse passages from different books from the Bible. E.g., Genesis. Gospelr users and ministers can add notes to any passage, offering the potential for spiritual conversation, albeit digital.

This is only a very cursory glance at enlightenment options via Twitter. You might find more. If you you’re interested the Dalai Lama’s tweets, make sure you follow the right profile, as there multiple related (and a few opportunistic) accounts. It’s obvious that not all of the tweets are by His Holiness — and there are only 29 at this writing — but he is dispensing his brand of compassionate wisdom from there.

Now, if you’re a religious leader of some sort, you might be wondering how you could use Twitter to host englightenment services — to dispense both open enlightenment advice as well as take private queries and respond privately — you have two key choices. The first is to build a 3rd-part application (over Twitter), and the second is a quick do-it-yourself approach, described below in a nutshell.

1. Select two Twitter profile names that you want to use. Make sure they’re not taken, else come up the other profile names.
   • The first account will be for open advice — a profile anyone on Twitter can follow.
     The second account will be for a protected account, possibly for local followers, but also for handling private queries. You could very well use just one account, but if the first account grows beyond one person’s ability to manage, and you don’t want a volunteer viewing private queries, then it’s best to keep two accounts.
2. Create the two twitter accounts. You might want to have the first account verified, to show authenticity. The second account should be set to protected status.
3. Promote & customize the first account:
   • Fill in the bio with text & links. You don’t have much space, and any information (your name, organization name, website, other twitter accounts) that you cannot fit in can go into the profile background.
   • Customize the profile background. Add a larger picture, an organization logo, the URL of the private account (and quick explanation of its purpose.)
   • Promote. Publish the URL on your website, if you have one, on your business cards, in your email signature.
   • Build your Twitter following. There’s tons of advice online, including at SocialTimes. (Or if you only want local followers, let them know about your Twitter account during live services.)
   • Start tweeting. Broadcast inspiration and advice via your Twitter status updates. Tweet links to your spiritual blog posts. If you somehow work in trending topics in your tweets, you’ll find your Twitter follower base increasing faster than if you don’t.
4. Promote & customize the second account:
   • As with the first account, do the same kind of customizations, but differentiate as necessary, since this is a private account that only approved “followers” can view the contents of (beyond the background and bio).
   • Promote. You can promote this account on the first account, on your website, your email signature, business cards or in person at services.
   • Accept ‘follow’ requests. Those Twitter users that want to follow this account have to be approved by you or someone assisting you.
   • Start tweeting. Keep in mind that the purpose of this account is twofold. First, you might want to dispense advice openly to this sub-group of followers. Second, you might receive private queries in the form of Twitter DMs (Direct Messages).
   • Answer queries. Just make sure that if you receive a private query DM, you should answer privately. Otherwise, anyone who has been approved to follow the private account can see your answer, which could be embarrassing for all concerned.
5. Choose your client. If you don’t like the Twitter.com web interface, use a desktop or mobile Twitter client. Most of them make it easy to tweet from — including reading and answering DMs — and to browse what your “followers” (literally and figuratively, in this case) are tweeting. There are too many to cover here, but Tweetdeck and Seesmic are two options for desktop/ laptop computers. Twitterific is for Mac and iPhone, and there are many more options.

This approach can also be applied to a variety of non-religious online services, including handling business leads and more.

Secret-sharing Website Shut Down For Sharing Microsoft Secrets [Secrets] —

Since 1996, cryptome.org has posted documents people want to keep secret. On Saturday, the site published a confidential Microsoft document that revealed how much information the company keeps on users. Today, Microsoft succeeded in shutting the site down.

For years, Cryptome has admirably annoyed corporations and government agencies by posting sometimes-embarrassing secret documents on its barebones, Drudge-like front page. We've picked up a few good stories from them, including the TSA's standard operating procedure manual for screening supervisors and a story about a lying DEA agent.

Now, Microsoft has shut down the site via a DMCA takedown notice, claiming Cryptome violated its copyright by publishing a confidential document meant only for law enforcement. After the site's owner, Manhattan architect John Young, refused to take down the document, his ISP, Network Solutions, axed the site. (Geekosystem notes that Network Solutions is also 4Chan's ISP. Uh oh!)

A cursory glance at the document, "Microsoft Online Services Global Criminal Compliance Handbook," doesn't turn up anything especially explosive. (Wired has posted the entire thing.) Basically, it tells law enforcement officials exactly what kinds of information they can expect to receive if they subpoena Microsoft when investigating one of its customers. For examplle, Wired combed through the 22-page document and found that every IP address you use to log into Xbox Live is kept by Microsoft; and while your Microsoft Messenger buddy list might be turned over to the cops, your messages won't. (Though, who uses Microsoft Messenger except people in Southeast Asia, anyway?)

For now, Cryptome is at a temporary address, and Young remains defiant. He told Geekosystem that "Most repugnant in the MS guide was its improper use of copyright to conceal from its customer violations of trust toward its customers." He continued:

Microsoft's lawful compliance guide is one of a dozen or so (below) we have published recently and only Microsoft and Yahoo have behaved like assholes - probably because they are more afraid of the authorities than they are of customer wrath, having been burned repeatedly for not being sufficiently official ass-kissing.

Here's the thing: Why does it take a conspiracy-minded secret-sharing website for customers to find out exactly what kinds of information a company keeps on them, for how long, and who they might give it to? If there's a silver lining to this whole thing, it's that Microsoft's move has just alerted a bunch of people who were previously unaware that the company had every IP they've ever used to play Call of Duty online.

Cryptome has been especially adept at getting this kind information out there. (They have "spy guides" for everyone from AT&T to Yahoo to Skype.) We're eagerly awaiting the relaunch of cryptome at a different address and/or ISP.

Secret-sharing Website Shut Down For Sharing Microsoft Secrets —

Since 1996, cryptome.org has posted documents people want to keep secret. Then the site published a confidential Microsoft document that revealed how much information the company keeps on users. Today, Microsoft succeeded in shutting the site down.

For years, cryptome has admirably annoyed corporations and government agencies by posting sometimes-embarrassing secret documents on its barebones, Drudge-like front page. We've picked up a few good stories from them, including the TSA's standard operating procedure manual for screening supervisors and a story about a lying DEA agent.

Now, Microsoft has shut down the site via a DMCA takedown notice, claiming Cryptome violated its copyright by publishing a confidential document meant only for law enforcement. After the site's owner, Manhattan architect John Young, refused to take down the document, his ISP, Network Solutions, axed the site. (Geekosystem notes that Network Solutions is also 4Chan's ISP. Uh oh!)

A cursory glance at the document, "Microsoft Online Services Global Criminal Compliance Handbook," doesn't turn up anything especially explosive. (Wired has posted the entire thing.) Basically, it tells law enforcement officials exactly what kinds of information they can expect to receive if they subpoena Microsoft when investigating one of its customers. For example, Wired combed through the 22-page document and found that every IP address you use to log into Xbox Live is kept by Microsoft; and while your Microsoft Messenger buddy list might be turned over to the cops, your messages won't. (Though, who uses Microsoft Messenger except people in Southeast Asia, anyway?) But Microsoft still wanted it off the Internet—apparently wagering that bullying a small website into taking down barely-scandalous documents would seem less Big Brother-ish than the documents themselves.

For now, Cryptome is at a temporary address, and Young remains defiant. He told Geekosystem that "Most repugnant in the MS guide was its improper use of copyright to conceal from its customer violations of trust toward its customers." He continued:

Microsoft's lawful compliance guide is one of a dozen or so (below) we have published recently and only Microsoft and Yahoo have behaved like assholes - probably because they are more afraid of the authorities than they are of customer wrath, having been burned repeatedly for not being sufficiently official ass-kissing.

Here's the thing: Why does it take a conspiracy-minded secret-sharing website for customers to find out exactly what kinds of information a company keeps on them, for how long, and who they might give it to? If there's a silver lining to this whole thing, it's that Microsoft's move has just alerted a bunch of people who were previously unaware that the company had every IP they've ever used to play Call of Duty online.

Cryptome has been especially adept at getting this kind information out there. (They have "spy guides" for everyone from AT&T to Yahoo to Skype.) We're eagerly awaiting the relaunch of cryptome at a different address and/or ISP.

Every once in a while, a service or feature comes along that crystallizes everything people love and hate about the Internet. ChatRoulette is definitely one of those services. Plenty has been written already about the new social tool, which is a little like the Internet video version of speed dating. It was created by a 17-year-old Russian student as a lark and has exploded in popularity with as many as 50,000 simultaneous users, attracting interest from some (including Union Square Ventures investor Fred Wilson, who offered to fly the founder to New York for an interview and suggested he might invest) and revulsion from others.

The revulsion comes because of the somewhat prolific use of ChatRoulette by exhibitionists and other, er… excessively outgoing users, an experience that writer Ivor Tossell described eloquently in a recent article entitled “Click. Naked Guy. Click. Naked Guy. Click. Naked Guy.” Suffice it to say that young children — or even easily offended adults — shouldn’t be left to wander around ChatRoulette unsupervised. Tyler Coates of The Awl came up with a list of the top 25 things people said to him on ChatRoulette, which should give you some idea of what to expect.

Based on a cursory glance through this kind of material, or some of the bizarre and hilarious screenshots that have sprung up around the web, it would be easy to dismiss the service as a kind of pornographic and/or mentally deficient version of StumbleUpon (which probably should have thought of it before Andrey Ternovsky did, to be honest). But services like ChatRoulette are like a Petri dish for the social web — what they show us is frequently unappetizing, and even unhealthy, but can also give us a glimpse of what the future (or at least one version of it) might look like. In a recent post about ChatRoulette, sociologist and Internet researcher danah boyd said:

I find it difficult to respond to the fears because I find it endearing. ChatRoulette reminds me a lot of the quirkiness of the Internet that I grew up with. Like when I was a teen trolling through chatrooms, ChatRoulette is filled with all sorts of weird people.

She adds that one of the things she likes most about the service is its randomness — you never know what you are going to find when you click the “Next” button. Boyd’s fellow researcher Sarita Yardi also wrote about the service in a guest post on boyd’s blog, saying:

ChatRoulette reminds me of when people said blogging was like making a private diary public. The idea of sitting in your bedroom showing your face to anyone in the world is simultaneously anonymous yet deeply revealing. This violates almost all social norms of the offline world.

There have been other services much like ChatRoulette. One of the first things it reminded me of when I saw it was an early Internet network called CU-SeeMe, which allowed anyone with a web-cam to connect to and see anyone else. Of course, in the mid-1990s when CU-SeeMe became available, hardly anyone had a web-cam, so mostly what you got was bored university students in their IT labs. Not long afterward, however, we got the JenniCam — an always-on webcam that Jennifer Ringley set up in her dorm room that displayed whatever she was doing, from homework and sleeping to sex.

The main difference between then and now isn’t that anything radical has changed about the Internet or human nature, but a difference of scale. Instead of weak, dial-up connections to the web, broadband penetration is widespread (and likely to grow) and speeds are increasing. Streaming video is no longer something that is restricted to university students with their T1 lines. And webcams are ubiquitous as well, giving every teenager and bored retiree the equipment to jump on ChatRoulette or any other service. You think ChatRoulette is bad now? Wait until streaming video from cell phones and handhelds through services like Qik becomes commonplace.

Former SixApart executive Anil Dash said recently that ChatRoulette made him think about the power of the audience and of shared experience (however tawdry that experience might be). New York magazine also had a recent piece about how ChatRoulette sums up a lot of what is both good and bad about human behavior, both on the Internet and in the real world. As usual, the Internet finds ways of holding up a mirror so that we can see ourselves as we really are, warts and all. That mirror is getting faster, better quality, becoming more widely distributed, and yes — now includes video.

Related content from GigaOm Pro: Is Facebook Video Chat The Future of Social Media?

Post photo courtesy of ChatRoulette Screenshots, thumbnail courtesy of Buzzfeed