Catholic Web Site Development in the Super-Fresh Web

Introduction

One important strategy these days for small Catholic web site owners, so that they can continue to develop and improve their web services, is to dovetail the new technology with the old. This means that we need to join the super-fresh Web (a term coined by industry pioneer John Battelle) - a new Web that combines the elements of social networking, live searching, and link-sharing. Leading this new super-fresh Web is the popular site, Twitter.com. This article will explore how we can dovetail Twitter and other similar web services, into our basic Catholic web site development, to optimize well our services for the Catholic web.

Social networking

In social networking, we can inform two groups of people, as regards our web development work and activities: friends and followers. Friends are people whom we know, while followers are other people who formally want to be updated of our web development updates. Both groups are important in the super-fresh Web. Building a social network of friends and followers will grow naturally if we continually develop web content that is customer-oriented and client-centered. Jon warner, author of the book "The Networking Pocketbook", teaches that networking is "an altruistic activity involving giving and sharing, rather than taking." With this concept of networking, the more we give to our friends and followers, the more we receive (in the form of a continuously growing social network).

Giving comes naturally to the Catholic spirit. We can grow our Catholic social network by continuously giving fresh updates of web development tips, ideas, tools, and strategies to fellow Catholics, through such sites as Facebook.com, MySpace.com, Twitter.com, Librarything.com, and Friendfeed.com. With these sites to help grow our network, all we need to do is to organize and set-up a weekly schedule, wherein we can regularly give and share what we have learned, of new web development techniques. We can add more networking sites aside from these ones mentioned, as long as we can responsibly manage and control our web development work and activities on the Web.

Live searching

The three major search engines have recently improved their search services. Google has come up with Google Squared, google.com/squared; Yahoo! Search has added new features to their search results; and Microsoft has launched its new search engine called Bing.com. In general, these three search engines give both archived and fresh results to search queries made by people on the Web. But to obtain really fresh results, people can now have access to this "first to cover" news or reports from Twitter.com's live search box. Once we make a search query at Twitter, if we find something really helpful and useful, then we can follow the fresh updates made by that Twitter member.

Link-sharing

Another way of giving and sharing fresh updates of our web development activities and work, is through link-sharing. This we can easily do in Facebook.com and in Twitter.com. Since the "what are you doing?" update box limits our writing to just a few characters (140 in Twitter), we can also use the web service of Tinyurl.com to shorten our lengthy links to short ones. Link-sharing is also integrated in a new social media site called Allvoices.com. At Allvoices.com, your news report or story is automatically updated at Twitter, thus enabling your link-sharing efficiently. The advantage of link-sharing is that we can update our friends and followers with very useful and helpful information, that can even come from as big as a 10,000+ word article, just by simply transforming it to a small URL through Tinyurl.com.

Mobile access important in the super-fresh Web

Since every moment counts in the super-fresh Web, during the times that we are away from our desktop PC, our mobile phone comes in handy whenever we need to continue our social networking, live searching, and link-sharing. Because of this new trends in the Web, and also to improve one's communication system, it would be advisable to modestly upgrade your mobile phone, to something like a Nokia S60 - one that has symbian technology. Any Nokia S60 phone can access Gmail and access the Web for making Twitter updates. To access Gmail, you need to download Gmail's application at gmail.com/app. Then after placing the right settings, and having your phone configured properly by your mobile web access provider, you can now make updates even when you are away from your desktop PC.

Summary and conclusion

The trend today is to be part of the super-fresh Web - that part of the Web where you can get "first to cover" accounts, reports, and news updates from both professionals and people who have made the Net a means for social networking. Our web site development will be made fuller and more progressive if we dovetail the technology of this super-fresh Web, with the technology we already have mastered to some degree - the basic web 1.0 and web 2.0 technology environments. Though the super-fresh Web is growing rapidly and gaining a high rate of new visitors each day, we must not forget the basics of web development - the roots and foundation for establishing a stable foothold on the Web. The wisest move therefore would be to dovetail this new technology into the old one. Also, we must use the technology moderately, so as not to lose time needed for its assessment, evaluation, and for reflecting upon one's experience in its development.

Related resources

• The Network Pocketbook, by Jon Warner
• How Twitter Will Change the Way We Live, by Steven Johnson, Time (June 15, 2009 issue)

Dennis Emmanuel Cabrera
Web Developer Methods for Catholics
www.c-web-developer.net
My Main Catholic Blog
www.c-internet-mission.net