The need for the Church to collect information and monitor trends around the Internet, as well as expose new opportunities, keeps growing and expanding rapidly.

Meet researcher and analyst Mary Meeker. A partner at Kleiner Perkins, Mary has focused her entire career on emerging technology trends.

For the past eight years she has taken the stage at the Web 2.0 Summit to review the mega-trends defining today’s Internet.

Mary’s entire 2011 presentation is awesome and worth your time. To get the most out it, I would recommend watching her live version on YouTube. The full slide deck is below.

I have extracted six trends from the presentation that will interest anybody with a stake in Christian communication.

Globality

Meeker reports that 81% of users of the top global Internet properties are outside the U.S. In 3 years, China added more Internet users than exist in the U.S. The top 5 adders were China, India, Nigeria, Russian and Iran. The people in eleven countries use social networking more than we do in the U.S., on a monthly basis per hour.

Radio and digital platforms must find innovative ways to create cross-platform synergy to get the gospel into international markets.

Ideas: 1) Share and aggregate knowledge and resources 2) Test market evangelism and outreach solutions in the U.S. 3) Leverage social networking in the U.S. to enlist support for taking Internet evangelism to the international marketplace.

Mobile

Mobile users are still growing very quickly. Meeker cited 35% year-on-year growth for 3G, almost a billion subscribers. Smartphones have outshipped feature phones in the U.S. and Europe. She highlighted the explosive growth of iPhone, iPad, and particularly Android. Sixty percent of Pandora’s users are already accessing Pandora via mobile devices, starting from a zero base in 2008.

Prepare for the ubiquitous computing revolution when every car, camera, tablet, wristwatch, and TV screen has access to nearly unlimited computing power.

Ideas: 1) Get some people inside or outside your organization helping you think hard about how to do mobile ministry. 2) Think creatively about how you can serve your partners, customers and end users at the same time. 3) Decide on how mobile extends who God has called your organization to serve and focus on that.

User Interface

In the wake of the iPhone and the iPad, there’s a revolution in the way we interact with computers, through touch and voice, while mobile. Meeker quoted the assertion made by SoundCloud CEO Alexander Ljung – Sound will be bigger than video on the Web.

While almost all the focus is on music for audio online, there is still a huge potential for the spoken word of the gospel.

Idea: Present short and long form messages and stories as social objects that people can share and discuss online.

Content Creation

Mary referred viewers to a presentation by Joanne Bradford, Chief Revenue Officer for Demand Media. Bradford points out that content creation has become commoditized. The marginal rate for digital content is $0. The more information that is created, the more the value is reduced. Content proliferates. Ad rates drop. Losing market share. Revenue shifts.

Data + content creation = Value

Ideas: 1) Create data storage partnerships that exist to identify listening patterns and interests of seekers. 2) Use data to help communicators create gospel centered communities based on information about what they are searching for spiritually. 3) Help seekers find the trusted, curated biblical content by aggregating the leading communicators.

Advertising

The time has come, and the kingdom of God is near. Change the way you think and act. Mark 1:15

Online advertising is booming.The Internet and mobile are a twenty-billion dollar opportunity in the U.S., if revenue equals time spent with those mediums. Advertising dollars follow eyeballs.

Monetize digital strategies or be marginalized on the Web. It’s as plain as that.

Unprecedented Times

God has appointed you to live in these unprecedented times of using technology to change lives with the gospel.

Information about the Internet can be useful, but its real value to your organization will be determined by the ability and willingness and call from God to act on it.