It is probably fair to say that most of us have accounts on at least one social networking site, if not on two or three. Much in the same way message boards were the craze a few years back, social media networks (SMN) such as MySpace, Facebook and Twitter have become a common part of our daily (and even hourly) lives.
About five or six years ago Everyone's Connected (EC) became all the rage. It was not intended to be an Apostolic networking site but within a few years it truly seemed as if EC had been taken over by Apostolics. Somewhere around a year ago (sorry if I'm fuzzy on the exact timeline) EC was actually take over/bought out by some other company who completely changed the layout, etc. and the site was abandoned en mass in favor of Everyone's Apostolic (EA) - a site created specifically for social networking among Apostolics and run by Apostolics.
However, the recent announcement by EA that they would begin charging membership fees has created an uproar (and seriously people can someone explain to me why church people always have a problem paying for something that they view as "church" related? bandwidth is ridiculously expensive and the only options are to pay for it through membership fees or allowing advertising) that has people once again abandoning ship and other enterprising folks starting their own Apostolic networking sites.
The Apostolic Report states that several sites have been developed using the same software that runs Everyone's Apostolic, including "Unashamedly Conservative Apostolics" which only allows you to join if you are 1) a conservative apostolic, 2) invited, and 3) if your pastor is also a member. If you're looking for something a bit less authoritarian there is Apostolic Fellowship Hall, which provides such features as,
the ability of users to create Blogs, add posts to Groups as well as create their own groups, add photo albums, and videos to their home page. Advertise in the classified section, create pages, post to the wire (a twitter like feature), add and share bookmarks (similar to sites such as stumble upon, digg and reddit), And post questions which other users may then answer.
You can also try "My Apostolic Network" and "Apostolics Online".
Personally, I'm all for keeping my basic EA account (which I admit is rarely used) and using Facebook for everything else. After all, within a few months there will probably be some new hot technology that will make Facebook a ghost town and I'll have to learn a new technology.
3 comments:
I'm not deleting my EA account, but I view all my social networking and internetting as a hobby. A hobby that I already pay my cable company to supply me with the internet access, so I'm just not willing to pay any additional fees. In almost 4 years of blogging, I haven't paid a dime and I'm still connected and still blogging.
I agree though, I'm keeping Facebook, and then that's it. I don't see it going anywhere, as I think I'm the last person on earth to join.
I agree. I will keep my basic EA account just for finding and keeping up with old Apostolic friends. But I have been using and really enjoying facebook for awhile now anyway.
Great post btw..
Thanks for the link back to AR.
I agree with you both. I'm not interested in paying for my EA account because I don't really use it. It's convenient to have but I'm not on there enough to want to pay for it. And, as much as I love my Facebook account, if they go to monthly paid account there then I'm done with Facebook too.
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