social media

Before I get started, I want to make it abundantly clear that I am in no way ripping on Catholic Hot Dish.com in this post—I simply wanted an example for illustration, and this is one site that follows a design pattern I've seen on many Catholic sites. I enjoy Catholic Hot Dish, and am saying nothing of the blog or it's content—simply it's design choices...

Now that that's out of the way, I wanted to point out an alarming trend I've seen on many new Catholic websites, parish websites, diocesan websites, and blogs: the tendency to pollute the entire design with too much 'stuff' that distracts from the website's actual content (what readers want to see).

Since I often read things in my RSS reader or Instapaper, it's not a huge deal to me—I click one button and the overpowering design of a site vanishes—but it is a problem for many of your site's readers, who aren't tech savvy enough to use such services. It's especially troublesome if you don't have a mobile-optimized design (or if your mobile-optimized design doesn't actually provide the bits of information that are actually important and present in your 'full' design).

The worst case is a design that has too many design elements and doesn't have a mobile-optimized version, meaning a mobile device may be loading 1-2MB worth of resources over a 3G connection, just to read your article!

Sharing Too Much

There seems to be a tendency to push the 'share' links—and to push them hard. It's now normal to see a set of Facebook, Twitter, Google+, ShareThis, etc. links in not one, but three to five (or even MORE) places on a particular page.

In the example of Catholic Hot Dish, there are post-sharing buttons above and below the post (1 & 2), there's a sitewide 'stay connected' set of links at the top right (3), there's a Google+ widget (4), there's a Facebook fan page widget (5), there's a Twitter widget (6), and an extra set of two (redundant) share widgets at the bottom of the page (7 & 8).

Not only do all these widgets cause pages to load more slowly (in the case of CHD, probably about 3-4x longer than if all those widgets were gone—they make up more than half of the page size, and add about 60-100 requests per page), they also clutter the design and make it less likely someone will share something (because there are too many ways to do it!).

Overemphasis Causes Distraction

It's a bit like the sign-emphasis syndrome I encounter quite often when helping Catholic organizations with advertisements and campaigns, especially for printed material or graphics.

People have a tendency to overemphasize to the point of distraction:

Notice how, in the image above, even though we emphasize almost everything in the ad, nothing really stands out (well, maybe the title, but that's it).

There are two things you need to do to make sure you hit people where it counts and make them want to do what you want them to do (on your website, in an ad, on a flyer, etc.):

1. Take away the cruft.
2. Highlight only what's really important.

An Example of Minimal Web Design

I've been focusing on the idea of 'distractionless' web design for the past few years, and I recently rebuilt Catholic News Live's website to try to cut out even more distraction from the site. I had to do a few things to get to the point where I am now:

1. Focus on the features I want people to use:
1. Reading the latest news stories.
2. Finding/purchasing the Catholic News Live mobile app.
2. Cut out everything that doesn't help with (1):
1. I took out all the ads on the site (they weren't really generating revenue anyways).
2. I took out all sidebar and footer information except for links to the mobile app (and a couple 'follow/like' buttons).
3. I distilled the list of the latest news down to the fewest functional elements.

Catholic News Live... before and after a makeover.

Nothing I took away made the site harder to use, or less functional—rather, it made the website faster to load (average page load times are down 30%, and the page size is halved), and made the relevant functionality of the site easier for end users to grasp and use.

Make some Changes

Look at the sidebars, widgets, links, and modules/plugins your site is currently using. Do you really need a 'ShareThis' link in addition to Twitter, Facebook, and Google+ share links, or can you just get by with one or two of those links?

Do you really need that 3D cloud of tags that fly around the mouse when you hover over them?

Do you really need an image rotator that shows the latest pictures you took on a family vacation?

Think about the actual utility of every element of your website, and whether it is essential to your site's functionality, or whether it may be distracting and paralyzing to your website's usability.

Take away the cruft. Keep only what's important.

I read a good post on the idea of parish online communities yesterday, over on Catholic Tech Talk (great site!), titled: Parish Online Communities: Private vs. Public. In it, Ryan Foley speaks about the value of parishes having private communities incorporated with their websites and parish member management systems.

I wrote, in response:

Coming from the perspective of having worked on a similar kind of project diocesan-wide (for priests), I have to say that creating an insular (parish-level, or even diocese-level) social networks is a serious undertaking.

We've tried twice to create online spaces (private social networks) for a particular population of the diocese, but both times, after an initial push by a few people that were forced into being leaders, the experiment failed. The reasons were many, but mostly boiled down to:

1. Not enough buy-in to make it worthwhile (the people who were most active were those who were already using other communications channels to keep in touch anyways).
2. Not enough 'space' (a few people posted a lot, causing many of the priests who would've otherwise been interested to stay out of the discussion).
3. The 'just another network' syndrome; for many of the people who seemed they would be the target demographic, they quickly responded with complaints that we were simply asking them to manage yet another profile/persona, and one which didn't really provide them added value (compared to the small communities they were already in on Facebook, Twitter, and in real life).

Yesterday the Vatican held its first-ever summit of Catholic bloggers, just a day after the extensive celebration of the Beatification of Pope John Paul II. Many Catholic bloggers from the U.S. attended, and you can view a pretty exhaustive play-by-play in Lisa Hendey's Twitter stream (view the hundreds of tweets from May 1!).

From a report by the Catholic News Service, Richard Rouse said the following on the purpose of the summit:

The Vatican meeting, he said, was not designed as a how-to seminar, and it was not aimed at developing a code of conduct, but rather to acknowledge the role of blogs in modern communications and to start a dialogue between the bloggers and the Vatican.

This is exactly the kind of meta-level view that I think is important to the Church's development of a strong online presence. Many people are too focused on the 'ooh, that's fancy! How do I do that?' way of doing things.

On the Pope's involvement in social media and online communications, Fr. Lombardi had the following to say:

Jesuit Father Federico Lombardi, Vatican spokesman, told the bloggers that while Pope Benedict XVI "is a person who does not Tweet or have a personal blog, he is very attentive and knows well what is happening in the world" and supports Catholic media efforts, as seen by his Good Friday television interview and by his book-length interview with the German writer Peter Seewald.

This is a great model for many of our spiritual leaders to follow; their primary mission is the care of our souls. A person in a sacramental position in the church may, but not must, participate in online communication activities... but never at the forfeit of his mission to care for the souls of God's people—only in support of that mission.

I'm encouraged by what I've heard so far about the summit... but I'm also waiting to hear more personal accounts of the summit, mainly from some of the many American bloggers who attended (Lisa Hendey, again, has a concise list of those who attended in this post).

This article gives us reason for pause:

What do college students in China, Chile, the United States, the United Kingdom, and Uganda have in common? According to a new global study by the University of Maryland's International Center for Media & the Public Affairs (ICMPA) and the Salzburg Academy on Media & Global Change, they're all addicted to media. That might not seem like news—after all, there's a reason the term "CrackBerry" came into being—but just how severely students are addicted is startling, and has real implications for our schools where Skyping, blogging, learning-via-gaming technology is increasingly the norm.

How do we engage an audience that is quite immersed in the world of technology, social media, etc., and bring them into a real, physical and emotional relationship with other humans, and even more importantly, the real and life-giving presence of Jesus Christ?

Just as in all things in our current state of being, we should be "in the world, but not of it."

Another side note: If college students are so addicted to media, I can guarantee that many, if not most, have had a large amount of exposure to pornography. This bodes ill for our cultural values in the coming years.

[Note: Please read through the comments at the end of this post for some great insights about this situation.]

Time and time again, I'm seeing media reports that portray something that happens in the Church with either incorrect, or easily-misconstrued wording, and it continually paints the Church in a strange—if not bad—light.

The latest example: a new app called 'Confession' on the iPhone App Store.

From BBC's article on the app:

It also allows them to examine their conscience based on personalised factors such as age, sex and marital status - but it is not intended to replace traditional confession entirely.

Instead, it encourages users to understand their actions and then visit their priest for absolution.

It would be nice if we could be a little more clear in this wording—this app in no way whatsoever replaces any part of the Sacrament of Reconciliation. It is merely a tool/checklist to help penitents with their Examination of Conscience.

Since the article also points out that the Catholic Church has given its Imprimatur to this app, this surely means Catholics no longer need to visit the confessional to be absolved, correct? Nope. But that's the inference that will be drawn by almost every non-Catholic who knows anything about the Sacrament, and likely most Catholics as well (who goes to Reconciliation anymore, anyways? Isn't it some optional practice? </sarcasm>).

For example, from Geekologie: Catholic Church Approves Confession App

$1.99 to have your sins forgiven, not a bad deal! That's right folks, the Catholic Church has officially approved an iPhone app that guides worshipers through the process of confession. 

I've been monitoring many different aspects of the Church's communications over the past few years, and, as most of the readers of this post already know, it is easy to find many more examples of positive Catholic news gone awry—mostly because it was not communicated clearly, cohesively, immediately, and accessibly, to the media and to the public.

It is my goal (and I hope it is yours as well) to help make this happen less frequently.

[Update:] It was pointed out that an anchor on CNN's Newsroom also said of the app:

PHILLIPS: I'm a woman of the cloth, OK? All right. Here's the deal. For $1.99 you can now get this app, all right? And it's for sinners. And I'm not -- and the Catholic Church is actually saying -- endorsing this. So you don't have to go to church. You don't have to go see the priest. All you do is you go on to this app, OK, you log in.

(Source). [Emphasis mine]

I long for the day when I and others can spend more time communicating the truth, and new messages of hope and love, rather than clarifying that which others have said/introduced about the faith.

The Pope delivered his message on the 45th World Day of Communications. Very apropos:

It is an ever more commonly held opinion that, just as the Industrial Revolution in its day brought about a profound transformation in society by the modifications it introduced into the cycles of production and the lives of workers, so today the radical changes taking place in communications are guiding significant cultural and social developments. The new technologies are not only changing the way we communicate, but communication itself, so much so that it could be said that we are living through a period of vast cultural transformation. This means of spreading information and knowledge is giving birth to a new way of learning and thinking, with unprecedented opportunities for establishing relationships and building fellowship.

The Pope has dealt with the Internet, social networking, and mass communications many times in the past. He is always quick to highlight the transformational power new technologies offer—in this case, he compares our communications revolution to the Industrial Revolution.

He is, as always, quick to warn of the dangers involved in this technology's misuse, and reminds us that, as with every tool humanity uses, this tool must, too, be placed at the service of good, rather than evil... and it is up to you and I to do this!

As with every other fruit of human ingenuity, the new communications technologies must be placed at the service of the integral good of the individual and of the whole of humanity. If used wisely, they can contribute to the satisfaction of the desire for meaning, truth and unity which remain the most profound aspirations of each human being.

The Pope warns that online communication, particularly, I think, in the form of status-posting and blogging, "can become a form of self-indulgence." He also warns of the dangers of a digital lifestyle, including "enclosing oneself in a sort of parallel existence," "excessive exposure to the virtual world," and "constructing an artificial public profile for oneself."

The pope continues to remind us that "virtual contact cannot and must not take the place of direct human contact with people at every level of our lives."

The whole message is incredibly succinct and important for anyone working online to read. Please read it in full—and post your thoughts here!

Further Reading for Thought/Discussion:

• I'm Obsessed with the Obsession
• New Book on "The Church and New Media" 
• Social networking sites are a 'modern form of madness'
• Getting Intimate on Facebook
• Pope Benedict's 43rd World Communications Day Message (2009)
• The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains
• How the Internet Gets Inside Us
• Children are happier with their virtual lives and not the real world
• Chris Bowler: "I struggle greatly to focus on one task for any length."

I will be posting more about the themes the Pope highlights in this message in the coming months. I think these issues have been on many people's minds (mine included), with much more frequency, now that social media has begun to truly pervade people's entire lives.

My prediction: 2011 will be the year of Social Media for the Catholic Church... at least in the United States.

Let's look at some of the latest developments:

• One of the topics for next week's Fall Assembly of the USCCB is "Integrating new media into diocesan communication structures."
• Blogs, Twitter, and other social media outlets are becoming less derivative and dependent on mainstream media, according to a recent Pew report.
• The USCCB recently released a synthesis of social media best practices in its Social Media Guidelines.
• Catholic websites are slowly beginning to integrate more into social media. Catholic news sites are leading the charge, along with high profile bloggers. Dioceses and larger parishes are joining the parade, albeit slowly and begrudgingly at times.

Sadly, there are still very few diocesan-level social media initiatives, but I think this will quickly change in the coming year. There are also relatively few bishops represented online—this is something that may take longer to happen, but it will happen.

It will be interesting to see what comes of the USCCB's discussions on social media.

This morning I noticed the following interesting address from Archbishop Claudio Maria Celli, President of the Pontifical Council for Social Communications, to of all places, the 6th general congregation of the synod on the Middle East, which is ongoing now. 

Digital culture is present in the various nations of the Middle East and in local Churches through television, radio, cinema, websites and social networks. All this media space has an impact on daily life. ... As indicated in the 'Relatio', it is necessary to train pastoral workers as well as lay people and journalists, but not only them. The formation of seminarians is also a vital issue, not so much as regards technology which they handle better than we do, but as regards communication, which is communion in this rapidly developing culture.

Without priests - and without bishops - who understand modern culture, the communication gap will persist, something which will not favour the transmission of the faith to the young in the Church. It is not sufficient to build websites: what is needed is a presence that is able to create authentic means of communication, that opens 'places' where people can gather to bear witness to their faith and to their respect for others.

Obviously this does not mean ignoring personal encounter and physical community life. These are not alternative actions: they are both indispensable for extending God's kingdom.

Well said, and a good exhortation/confirmation for us.

From the CNS:

Pope Benedict XVI unveiled a new Vatican agency to promote "new evangelization" and assigned it the task of combating the "de-Christianization" of countries that were first evangelized centuries ago.

...and of special interest to Open Source Catholic readers, it looks like this agency will work especially through the means of modern communications media, such as social networking:

The archbishop said the council would work closely with modern communications media -- an explicit request of the pope -- and that the council's staff would operate in several languages.

The Pope's apostolic letter went on to speak of the importance of religious values and family in society, and mourns the loss of community and the fact that many live in an "interior desert" as a result of relativism and modernism.

Very poignant; we'll see what comes of this!

There's a new Twitter hashtag around these parts, for social media use. This hashtag came about as a response to those who were wondering where to move after the bulk of the #cnmc (Catholic New Media Celebration) tweets were becoming less and less about the Celebration, and more and more about general Catholic social media practices and discussion.

Therefore, a general consensus was made that #cathmedia would be a good hashtag for Tweets having to do with Catholic media, and social media initiatives.

Some other hashtags I've used:

• #catholic - for all things Catholic
• #vocation - for vocations-related tweets
• #pope - for all things Pope Benedict XVI

Are there any other commonly-held Catholic Twitter hashtags everyone should be aware of? Currently, it seems the common practice to put a string of hashtags together for certain topics, like #Catholic #Prayer #Faith... while this is okay to do, it's best if there are some more specific hashtags which people can add to saved searches (like #cathmedia).