What Would Jesus Tweet?
I think I am a responsible Twit. I try to only tweet relevant information. I do not waste people’s time with nonsense. I don’t spam and if what I have to say is only relevant to one person I send it in a direct message. I also have the option selected to receive an email whenever I have a new follower. I like to send a “thanks for following me” message to new followers and the email helps ensure no one falls through the cracks.
I was a bit surprised the other day when I learned that I had a new follower of unimaginable renown. I was humbled that someone close to the hearts of two-billion people is now following little ole me.
G-d is everywhere but Jesus is following me. What is it that I may have tweeted that was so profound to have merited such an auspicious follower? But when I checked out JC’s profile I was shocked. I had more followers than Jesus…by a long shot. How could this be? Sure, I can be pretty charming at times. In rare moments of brilliance I can even be charismatic. But I have never cured the sick, helped the blind to see or walked on water. I have certainly never risen from the dead but thankfully I have never needed to try. I did once learn a neat trick where I could pour milk into a newspaper cone and make it disappear. But the milk and newspaper trick is pretty lame compared to turning water into wine. So how could it be that my following was larger and why would Jesus be following me?
Now in all fairness I should point out that Jesus has edged past me in followers in the time since he began following my tweets. But his numbers seem far too low. According to ask.com there are 2.1 billion Christians worldwide and after all, it’s Jesus for tweetssake. It seems to me that Jesus would easily have far more than the roughly seven hundred followers he has today on Twitter.
There must be countless Christian Soldiers that he could call upon to retweet his word. But I have never seen him recommended on FollowFriday. What about the Gideons? I have never stayed in a hotel room that was not previously visited by a bible-leaving Gideon. There must be a zillion of those guys to have achieved such thorough penetration. Jesus would be at the top of the charts if the Gideons just took one day off from their bible distribution duties and helped the boss improve his numbers.
But what if this is some sort of a sign? I became nervous that this was some pre-apocalyptic harbinger of destruction. Maybe this is the Web 2.0 version of a guy in Times Square wearing a sandwich board that reads “The End is Near, Repent!”
OMG (sorry Jesus), Ashton Kutcher has over seven hundred ten thousand followers! Kelso is at the top of the heap and Jesus is barely a footnote. How could it be that the Prince of Punk’d has one thousand times more followers than the Prince of Peace? Surely this is at least a riding crop for one of the Four Horsemen.
But it gets worse. American Idol impresario and men’s hair products connoisseur Ryan Seacrest has more than four hundred thousand followers. Miley Cyrus, who I have long suspected to be the antichrist, has topped one hundred thirty-five thousand followers.
Jesus was probably a weak rebounder and not much of a threat in the paint. But Shaq is dominating the virtual boards with well over a half-million followers. Wonder drummer Travis Barker appears to be at the back of this pack but still has more than fifty-four thousand followers. But then again, Jesus was never known to have had a smoking-hot wife (sorry again Jesus).
From the wide-angle view, the chart does not seem to be trending well for our web-enabled society. It never seems to be particularly pleasant when “The Man Upstairs” is displeased. All of those plagues in Exodus seem to be pretty nasty business. Pillars of salt also come to mind and I shouldn’t forget that brimstone makes me gassy. Perhaps a bit of biblical research was in order to make some sense of all this and see if any of this is foretold in scripture.
King Hezekiah was sent word through Isaiah that if he set his house in order G-d would add 15 years to his life. But while he was sick, before this deliverance came, what sayeth Hezekiah in Isaiah 38:14?
“Like a swallow, [like] a crane, so I twitter; I moan like a dove; my eyes look wistfully to the heights; O Lord, I am oppressed, be my security.”
Twitter, right there in the Bible! But what about some of the other popular Web 2.0 manifestations? Apparently many of our online activities were not only foretold but it would appear that the scripture is something of a users manual.
Jeremiah 20:11 reveals StumbleUpon as something of a competitive advantage and suggests that improper utilization brings spells failure.
“But the Lord is with me like a mighty warrior; so my persecutors will stumble and not prevail. They will fail and be thoroughly disgraced; their dishonor will never be forgotten.”
And the Prophet tells us again in Jeremiah 46:16;
“They will stumble repeatedly; they will fall over each other. They will say, ‘Get up, let us go back to our own people and our native lands, away from the sword of the oppressor’.”
The future appears to be a bit darker for those who Digg. Amos might have mellowed out a bit once Andy came around but in his Bible contribution days, he sees in Amos 9:2 that Digg as an elevator with only a down button.
“Though they dig[g] into hell, from there my hand shall take them; Though they climb up to heaven, From there I will bring them down.”
There are a few positive mentions of today’s web that are bright spots in the Bible. RSS is not only lauded but encouraged in Proverbs; “The lips of the righteous feed many, But fools die for lack of wisdom” (Proverbs 10:21). Perhaps it is no surprise that sharing applications have biblical approbation; “And do not neglect doing good and sharing, for with such sacrifices G-d is pleased,” (Hebrews 13:16).
It is unfortunate, however, that the record industry has taken it upon itself the re-write the word and re-define wrongdoing. The message in Luke 6:49 for The Pirate Bay and its contemporaries is to take heart because the torrent will win in the end.
“But the one who has heard and has not acted accordingly, is like a man who built a house on the ground without any foundation; and the torrent burst against it and immediately it collapsed, and the ruin of that house was great.”
How do you like me now RIAA?
But I found the Bible to be filled with sound advice on being a responsible twit. In Exodus 4:13 we are reminded that sending information is more important than the sender; “But he said, ‘Please, Lord, now send [the message] by whomever You will’,” But in Nehemiah 6:8 we are cautioned against tweeting false information; “Then I sent [a message] to him saying, ‘Such things as you are saying have not been done, but you are inventing them in your own mind’,” And most importantly we should exercise caution when vetting followers and those who retweet us; “He cuts off [his own] feet [and] drinks violence who sends a message by the hand of a fool,” Proverbs 26:6.
All of this Bible study was very satisfying to my soul and clearing for my cache but I remained troubled, verily. Then I came across Psalm 23, verse 6; “Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life; And I will dwell in the house of the Lord Forever.”
Wait, surely, goodness and mercy?
I looked back over Jesus’ followers I found many colorful and interesting profiles including The5thApe, BBQMaven, JackAssLetters and tweetOlicious. But I did not find Surely, Goodness or Mercy. And hold on a second, didn’t Jesus have a posse of a dozen guys? Unless JackAssLetters is Matthew and unless Luke favors tweetOlicious as his screen name perhaps I had been deceived. Oh Jesus, fool me once.
“As a result we are no longer to be children, tossed here and there by waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, the trickery of men, by craftiness in deceitful scheming,” Ephesians 4:14.
I was a bit disappointed but relieved as I came around to the realization that perhaps Jesus was not in fact among my followers. I did start to feel better about the future of mankind and our imminent destruction. This was all an appropriate parable for any member of an online community, social media user or online marketer.
Twitter is an emerging medium. Over time it will refine and find its equilibrium. Back in the mid to late 1990s anyone with a few bucks and the URL for InterNIC could register any domain they wanted. Although I’m still kicking myself for not snapping up a few when I had the chance, companies were able to sue the courts to get their property or trademarked names returned. Twitter is still a place where anyone can be whoever they want to be. There are numerous Twitter fakers online today in addition to Jesus. Well known people with fake profiles include Borat, Bill Clinton, William Shatner, Bernie Madoff, David Hasselhoff and even Abe Vigoda who has been dead for 26 years. But companies and celebrities are dealing with these in much the same way they handled cybersquatters 15 years ago.
Protection of the identities of anonymous bloggers has been upheld in several state supreme courts. Additional laws and regulation are coming for the use of all social media. New Jersey and West Virginia are considering a crack-down on tough or threatening talk used online. New Jersey is also considering requiring sites such as Facebook and MySpace to police their sites for offensive posts or be at risk of consumer fraud lawsuits. Tweets on Twitter and posts on Craigslist have led to defamation suits. These are the inevitable growing pains any nascent community with explosive growth.
Twitter, however, is truly an amazing tool for communication and real-time search. But marketing experience is still necessary to successfully qualify an audience, understand consumer behavior, track targeted behavior and segment a market. I know that Jesus is not a marketing guy because he failed to use the tools at his disposal to find his target demographic. Had he used some of the emerging tools and applied some traditional marketing expertise he may have learned that I’m Jewish.
Maturation will come and the ability for people to share information will only increase with this maturity. Twitter will continue to grow and will soon find a path to revenue. When Twitter is answering to customers as well as users things will change. But these changes will usher in ways to become more effective in audience reach, targeting and communication because it will be profitable. I look forward to representatives of any religion or viewpoint wanting to hear what I have to say as I want to hear from them. Without these experiments we lose the social part of social media and the free marketplace of ideas.
And Jesus, if you still need some help refining your online campaign have your girl give me a call.
And together we say, “Amen.”
The Bible missed Facebook, Bebo, or so it seems….
OMG! Your blog is hilarious!!
I noticed that Jesus, his minions, and several Jesus impersonators started following me after I hit 666 followers. A sign?
My site shows up in the weirdest of places. Thanks for mentioning it.