Of course, I want to follow along as much as possible from home, as I’m sure you all do! Luckily, the staff at the Communications Office will be making regular updates to the website through the PCConnect-Daily newsfeed and on the General Assembly page itself.

Of course one of the best ways to follow and discuss an event like GA from afar is Twitter. If you’re familiar with Twitter and want to keep up with and comment on the Assembly proceedings, the Communications Office has established a hashtag specifically for GA. All Tweets related to GA should contain the hashtag: #pccga09

Even if you’re not a “Twitterer” yourself, you can follow the action on Twitter’s search page: http://search.twitter.com/search?q=pccga09 or a special page we’ve setup here at BeingPresbyterian: Live Coverage

If Facebook is more your thing, you can follow the proceedings through regular updates to the PCConnect Facebook Page.

I look forward to reading the reports from Hamilton and especially your comments on them!

Colin Carmichael
Associate Secretary, Communications (currently on leave)

Earlier this week there was an unconference in Toronto called FacebookCamp that brought Facebook developers and marketers together with staffers from Facebook itself. Just to illustrate the scale of Facebook activity in Toronto, there were 475 people registered for the event. Local blogger Dave Fleet has a great post on the event.

The most salient points for me from Dave’s post are the most recent stats from Facebook about Facebook:

• Facebook’s rate of growth is increasing exponentially;
• 175 million people logged-in to Facebook in the last 30 days;
• The average Facebook user has 120 friends; in Canada that is higher – 150-200;
• One in two Canadians are now on Facebook;
• Half of those Canadians are on Facebook every day;
• Canadian users average 2.7 visits per user per day;
• 70 per cent of Torontonians using the Internet are on Facebook

I share these stats with you to reinforce my belief that whatever you think about Facebook, it is simply too pervasive to be ignored. Like it or not, Facebook, as a means of connecting with your local Presbyterian community, is as important as a church website or even your church bulletin.

Does your church have a Facebook group? Why not?

There are currently at least 25 close to 50 groups on Facebook related to the Canadian Presbyterian community – and I’m sure there are many I haven’t found. Here are just a few:

• The Presbyterian Church in Canada (unofficial)
• Canada Youth 2009
• Knox College
• Knox, Waterloo
• PCC Webmasters
• Valleyview, Calgary
• National Presbyterian Museum
• The Elders’ Institute
• CNOB PYPS
• St. Andrew’s, Ottawa
• Friends of St. Andrew’s, Stirling
• Trintity-Oro
• Camp D’Action Biblique

If you don’t spend much time on Facebook, you might think that we must have had an explosion of university students in The PCC. As much as we would welcome such a blessing, the demographics of Facebook now are much different than they were just eighteen months ago and conventional wisdom hasn’t yet caught up. In fact, most Canadian adults on Facebook are over 25.

What is even more surprising is the sheer number of Canadians that spend some of their time connecting with friends and family on Facebook. About 11 million Canadians now have Facebook accounts – that represents well over a third of Canadian adults. Using demographic information extracted from Facebook’s advertising system, I was able to determine the size of each age group on Facebook for Canada. The results are:

While it’s clear that the university crowd is the largest single age group on Facebook, Canadians over the age of 25 represent about half of the entire Canadian Facebook population. To me, these numbers represent a huge ministry opportunity for The Presbyterian Church in Canada.

What do you think? In what ways could we, as a denomination, reach out to the Presbyterian community that already exists on Facebook?

In February, I’ll be speaking at an unconference called PodCampToronto where I’ll be leading a discussion called “First Church of Facebook: an Exploration of Faith and Social Media.” We’ll be talking about the ways that Canada’s faith community are (or could be) using social media (like Facebook) to engage and minister to their constituents. If you have a story about how social media played a part in ministry, please share it with me either in the comments below or by email: ccarmichael@presbyterian.ca.