Where Focus in Mobile Ministry Among the Unreached of the Developing World
Here's the problem. You know mobiles have totally pervaded the developing world and the unreached people group that God has put on your heart. You know that you need to get a start at using this unique opportunity to see this people group reached with the gospel but what to do first? Do you develop an app they'll all want to have that also helps them to know more of Christ? Do you get Christian films put into mobile-compatible formats and put on mobile friendly websites for easy downloading? Do you try and get the local yellow pages and do a mass SMS texting campaign (hee hee) ? I don't know the answer to my own question but I'm mighty thankful to Antoine Wright and Mobile Ministry Magazine for putting us on to Tomi Ahonen's "Communities Dominate Brands" blog and I'd like to put some of his mobile marketing thoughts in here as he reports from the GSMA Mobile Asia Conference:
Next up was Chairman Chang Xiaobing from China Unicom. (What is China Unicom? China's second largest mobile operator with 142 million subscribers - bigger than AT&T and Sprint put together). Chairman Chang had listed SMS, WAP and MMS as 'mature' technologies for China. Here a vital comment - in many markets of the world, MMS is an emergent technology. Even in many parts of Europe or North America, MMS has less than one in three users. In China it is so massive and common, it is 'mature' like SMS and WAP. Great. And yes, I keep saying, don't focus on the tiny opportunities of smartphones or apps stores, go for the truly giant opportunities - MMS has 1.4 billlion active users worldwide and over 2.5 billion phones can accept MMS services and communications - here is your big opportunity.
http://communities-dominate.blogs.com/brands/2009/11/news-and-commentary-from-gsma-asia-mobile-congresshong-kong.html
So, there's one vote (and a fairly well-documented and powerful one at that) for us trying to figure out what opportunities MMS messaging presents and seeing what we can do to take advantage of those opportunities.
Next up was Chairman Chang Xiaobing from China Unicom. (What is China Unicom? China's second largest mobile operator with 142 million subscribers - bigger than AT&T and Sprint put together). Chairman Chang had listed SMS, WAP and MMS as 'mature' technologies for China. Here a vital comment - in many markets of the world, MMS is an emergent technology. Even in many parts of Europe or North America, MMS has less than one in three users. In China it is so massive and common, it is 'mature' like SMS and WAP. Great. And yes, I keep saying, don't focus on the tiny opportunities of smartphones or apps stores, go for the truly giant opportunities - MMS has 1.4 billlion active users worldwide and over 2.5 billion phones can accept MMS services and communications - here is your big opportunity.
http://communities-dominate.blogs.com/brands/2009/11/news-and-commentary-from-gsma-asia-mobile-congresshong-kong.html
So, there's one vote (and a fairly well-documented and powerful one at that) for us trying to figure out what opportunities MMS messaging presents and seeing what we can do to take advantage of those opportunities.
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by DanH on -
We have been working with Christian Voice in Australia to implement their Response Development System as a follow-up system to SE Asia. Right now, their system operates thru gateways operated by the cell phone provider. This means that they pay both ways for SMS in this case. Another ministry is adapting the system to work thru standalone gateways using GSM modems and Mac Minis running Linux. This means that we can place these Mac gateways in restricted access countries without getting China Unicom or Malaysian Celcom involved. I have attached the PPT version of a Keynote presentation I did in a strategy session recently. CVC is also adapting their system to connect to social networking sites like Facebook to manage conversations started on a FB interface (User Generated Content (UGC)) to be imported and exported through APIs to youtube, facebook and all the other major social networking sites for reply and interaction that can also manage one-to-one conversations as the current RDS application allows.
There is much we can talk about here. It generally seems that most of the network is concentrating on developing a visual message as opposed to figuring out how we can interact with a respondee!
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Permalink Reply by Clyde Taber on -
Dan,
Thanks. I don't think the PPT attached. Can you try again.
Clyde
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Permalink Reply by Antoine RJ Wright on -
Engagement is better than just giving a message. As soon as the Body gets that point, then mobile begins to make more sense to all parties - just as some of the magazine companies (and their publishers) who are looking to create "engagement marketing programs utilizing mobile devices and internet" as the place where media and eyeballs will go.
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Permalink Reply by K on -
Yes, flesh on flesh communication of Christ through love and example is always the ideal but when you move from America (where 45% of the population told Gallup they were evangelical Christians) to somewhere like Iran (where if you included Christians, Bahais, Zoroastrians, and Jews together you would still have less than 1% of the total population) and you realize that getting outside missionaries in is nearly impossible you have to look for communications media to 1) Equip that minute population of evangelical believers with a way of spreading the word way beyond themselves and the comparatively small number of relationships they'll ever have in their life; 2) Get the gospel in to the majority of the population who likely will never have contact with a real believer. There are, unfortunately, still thousands of people groups with a Christian witness among them that is well less than 2.5% of the poupulation and this is where I think the mobile is most important. The mobile seems to provide the largest reach of any media/communications platform with mobile subscriptions to rise to 5 billion by 2013. SMS and MMS can be found on the simplest of mobiles and yet it doesn't seem like any real work is being put into creatively figuring out how SMS and MMS can be used for the glory of God and the spread of His kingdom.
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Permalink Reply by K on
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Yeah, that last post was long enough but I need to end it by agreeing with Antoine again that "engagement is better than just giving a message". If the mobile only gives a gospel presentation and doesn't provide a follow-on means for the reader/listener/viewer to get in closer touch not just with Jesus but also with His body than it really hasn't done everything it should and must do!
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Permalink Reply by Tony Whittaker on -
Couple more resources:
Africa's use of mobiles for web access - and for many this will the only access they can get due to lack of fixed lines: http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2009/dec/22/mobilephones-internet
Facebook is particularly popular.
42 minute documentary on the same issue:
http://www.e-gear.com/blog/the-mobile-phone-is-pc-africa-the-movie-...
Mobile penetration is ahead of electricity penetration:
http://talkitup.typepad.com/media_munchies/2009/12/in-mobile-phone-...
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