Ever since doing the MMM Mobile Experiment Report (PDF), I’ve had this uneasy feeling about continuing a website here. Don’t get me wrong, in terms of a place for people to see MMM in its most unfiltered manner, a website is probably one of the best tools for this. As a person though, I’m mobile – very mobile – therefore the idea of a website being tied to a person, and therfore becoming more than a website has been something that has just kind of sat on the edge of those things I experiment with, its something that I’m just personally trying to pull off. I do wonder often because of this experience though if I really need a website.
Now, for most ministries, the question isn’t so much do they need a website, but ratherwhat’s the best use for their website? If you will, how does the website accurately and easily point the way to connecting and understanding the purpose of your organization. And I think that’s where the question about MMM’s website really comes from.
Sure, there’s editorial-like content here; and, this is good for a website to have. But what about those other, connecting. aspects of that interesection of mobile and minsitry. A website doesn’t serve as solid a purpose as IM, SMS, picture galleries, and voice. How a ministry/organization is able to use all of these social connecting components to be whom they are – along with the website – is that key point of strategy that I think is missing, or not well executed.
Many of the changes that have happened here lately have been in the idea that MMM might not be a website as much as part of one’s social graph to which the website is one of many spokes that can be connected to. And then in this social graph, MMM becomes whatever is needed to those persons and groups that would benefit from the knowledge and connections here.
In light of where we are, and where we want to go, this is one of those questions that sit pretty high. Because MMM is not necessarly trying to go where the trends are, but where they will be in mobile/web/context/etc. Does your ministry/org have the same views towards their website and other outreaches, and if not, maybe that’s something of a question to carry throughout the new year.