Colin's Blog

It’s a big week for Facebook. With their annual developer conference coming up, they’ve rolled out a few new features including “Smart Friend Lists” which I hadn’t even had a chance to write about here before today’s HUGE news: you can now subscribe to a personal profile’s public updates without having to friend them.

Here’s how it works. As you browse around the site, you’ll notice that some users have a button at the top of their profile that says ‘Subscribe’. Click it, and you’ll start seeing that user’s status updates in your News Feed, just as if you were their Facebook friend. But there’s a big difference: unlike normal Facebook friends, the people you subscribe to don’t have to approve your subscription request, and there’s no limit on how many people can subscribe to any given user.
…
Of course, Facebook has offered a similar feature called Pages for years now, which was meant for nearly the same thing (you’ll find that many journalists and politicians have already created Facebook Pages… because that’s what Facebook told them to do). The difference here, Facebook says, is that users no longer have to maintain two separate entities; they can just use the site’s sharing settings to decide which content they want to share very broadly, and what will only be shared with friends.

via Facebook Launches Twitter-Like ‘Subscriptions’, Lets You Share With Unlimited Users | TechCrunch.

continue reading…

The latest incarnation of a decades-long collision of “cool” and “Christianity,” hipster Christianity is in large part a rebellion against the very subculture that birthed it. It’s a rebellion against old-school evangelicalism and its fuddy-duddy legalism, apathy about the arts, and pitiful lack of concern for social justice.

via Hipster Faith | Christianity Today | A Magazine of Evangelical Conviction.

I struggle with what this writer calls “hipster churches” and I can’t exactly put my finger on why, but here are a few thoughts: continue reading…

The Presbyterian Church in Canada is seeking a communications professional to fill an executive role at it’s national offices in Toronto. The Associate Secretary for Communications and Resource Production (roughly equivalent to a VP-Communications) is responsible for developing and executing internal and external communications strategies for the denomination. A heavy emphasis has been placed on web-based communication and social media.

Links: Announcement, Job Description [pdf]

I have the privilege of serving on the hiring committee for this position and would appreciate your help spreading word of this opportunity among the communications and social media community in the Toronto area. [Update: I resigned from the search committee shortly after posting this after it was suggested that I should seek the position myself - which I did. I start October 6th. :)]

Thanks!