Web 2.0 suite for ministries

In my last post I wrote about how churches need to think about using existing web sites as ways to develop a web presence for their ministries, rather than create their own or use “Christianized” versions of these sites. The comments on that post have been supportive of this concept and it seems that this is a topic that should be explored further. As I have thought more about this, I have begun wondering what is the right Internet “suite” of products that a church should get familiar with.

Over at his blog, Seth Godin had a post that may help here. Though not written necessarily for churches or ministries, it does give an example of how web 2.0 tools can be used to quickly and easily get a small organization a presence on the web in a meaningful way for very little cost. The web 2.0 tools he recommends are:

• TypePad
• Squidoo
• Google Maps
• Flickr

In addition, I would probably add:

• YouTube
• Facebook

With the exception of Squidoo, I am pretty familiar with all of these sites as a user. However, I have never looked at them as possible ministry outlets before. Over the next couple of weeks, I will be reviewing each of these sites and trying to understand how they could be used for ministry purposes. In most cases, it may not necessarily be the specific site as much as it is the type of site it is (for example, TypePad provides blogging and content, but so does WordPress). If you can think of other sites (or competitors to these sites) that should be looked at, please let me know! And as I am reviewing each of these, please feel free to throw in your experience using these sites as well (both as a user and a content provider).