day 830: 800 Million

"And the Good News about the Kingdom will be preached throughout the whole world, so that all nations will hear it; and then the end will come."

In a few weeks Facebook will become a publicly traded company. When they do so they will being used by over 800 million people. There is no other social network that has gotten this many users. Are there any other companies who have this many customers? It's amazing that they have been able to amass this many users in less than 10 years of business. At 800 million people they are close to reaching 1/7th of the world's population. As they go on their road show with investors, you can imagine that their growth story has them reaching a much higher percentage of the population than where they are now. How big can Facebook be? I think as big as people are looking to be connected with each other to share experiences. A friend, and well-known technology thinker and I were having coffee last week and we were discussing the legitimacy of the communication of the online world versus the spoken word, we landed on, while different and maybe more superficial, it is a now important form of communication and relating that is not likely to go away any time soon.

At my church in San Francisco, http://cornerstone-sf.org , we recently updated our website to better position our church in our community and tell our unique story. This is an important activity for a church. I know so, because this past weekend while we were in Tahoe I wanted to go to church and the way I found the church that I ended up attending was by searching on the internet and browsing through the different websites until I found the one that "felt" most like the one that I wanted to attend. As I walked into the church (a high school auditorium) on Sunday, I already had a sense and feel for what the church would be like. While not perfect, it did live up to what they marketed online. In Matthew Jesus talks about when we will see His Kingdom come, letting us know that this will happen when everyone on the earth has been given His message. Before the internet, before Facebook, that seemed so far off and dependent upon missionaries carrying the Word to the farthest flung parts of the world. But what if Facebook hits two, three, four, or almost seven billion people. Could it be one of our messages that post or we forward to a friend that ends up being the one? Let's let that thought sink in and consider how important our words can be.

Reference: Matthew 24:14 (New Living Testament)