I’ve been working on something with a friend for the last couple months called MySliceofPi.com. MySlice is going to be an interesting experiment in online property. Think of it as a little online billboard an owner maintains with a message and link of their choosing. We expect some people will see a monetary and/or promotional value in this to promote a product, blog, website, service, organization, etc. Others may use it as a messaging system to make a simple public statement…maybe something that makes sense to everyone or perhaps something that is really only for their friends to understand. We’ve come up with a bunch of ideas (“Pideas” actually) for ways people may use this.

We’ve already had some questions about why a digit is purchased rather than given away. The answer is twofold. First, we’d like to make some money off this. I’m personally planning to give 100% of my share to my church for at least the first 2000 digits that sell. The second reason is that if this thing takes off then the people who got in early will have something of a higher value than the people who got in later and the money is a barrier to people erroneously claiming a bunch of digits and turning this into a massive spam page. We have, however, made some digits free for the taking. All the zeros are free so check the site regularly to see when the next zero is available.

We know people have lots of ways to communicate online. We’ve got MySpace profiles, blogs, instant messages, YouTube, Facebook, email, photo sharing, etc. Sure, you don’t need another way, but we think there will be some people who’ll gravitate to the unique nature of this and get on board. If you’re one of those we encourage you to grab your slice of Pi.

My friend Nathan recently sent me a link to an article from PC Magazine that says less than one-fifth of teenagers (13-17 year olds) use email to communicate with friends whereas 40% of adults ages 25-54 use email to communicate to friends. The preferred method of communication for a third of the teenagers studied was instant messaging. Only 11% of adults use instant messaging though.

Although this study isn’t surprising, it was fascinating to see more numbers about the use and adoption of instant messaging over email for the teens. We heard some big numbers about IM back in the summer from Rick Klau when he spoke about web 2.0 at a convention in August.

I discovered a new website today via TechCrunch. It’s called LoopNote and looks very interesting…particularly for churches.

LoopNote is essentially a group notification system that allows anyone to create a “loop” to which people can join (and thus are in that particular loop). The “loop” can be about anything. It could be for a band that wants to notify people about upcoming shows or a community sports team that wants to give updates on games or rain outs.

What will make LoopNote work is that it allows you to choose your method of notification. If you want email notifications, you’ll get an email. If you would prefer a text message on your cell phone, you’ll get it that way. If you use instant messaging a lot, you can get it that way. Or maybe you just want to get it through an RSS feed…and that’s available too. With so many options to get the message it seems like a handy way to reach more people effectively.

Though this technology is nothing new to people familiar with similar features on social networking sites like Facebook or MySpace, the unique thing that LoopNote presents is this technology without the need to be a part of one of those networks.

Churches in the Loop?
Here’s where I think churches could find a benefit with LoopNote…churches are:
A) organizations that require regular communication to people about a variety of topics
B) notorious for not communicating well
That being said LoopNote seems like it would have a variety of uses in most churches. Here are a few examples:

• Small Group notifier - whatever type of small group/Sunday school method your church may take, this could be a great way to communicate with the people in the groups
• Worship Service announcements - recap Sunday’s announcements on Monday with a loop reminder
• Weekly message announcement - at the end of each week the church could send a message to the loop with the coming Sunday’s message title and a brief statement about what you could hope to learn or some questions for consideration leading up to Sunday.
• Playdates - I know my church has groups of moms who designate different days to get their kids together to play. With the text message feature, this loop would get the word out about last minute changes more effectively.
• Staff communications - in larger churches things change really fast and staff are not all in the same offices together. The staff could set up a private loop to be notified of everything from urgent needs to staff meeting changes.

On a side note, I don’t know that the creators of LoopNote intend for the system to be a content distribution mechanism, but it certainly could be. For instance a church could use LoopNote to send out daily or weekly devotionals.

LoopNote looks like it’s got some significant promise. It’s early on (they just launched for the public) and the adoption level will make or break it, but the idea seems solid and looks like it could really meet a need.