Keep in Touch with Pulse of 24-7 on TwitterJonah Bailey - 3 Mar 2009
Some of you might remember a service 24-7 Prayer offered a number of years ago called "WoW: Watchmen on the Walls". The idea was that those at the heart of the 24-7 Prayer "family" could keep in touch with the entire movement via SMS text messages. We launched the service at The Call in the UK in 2002. If we got enough subscribers (the service wasn't free) then we thought we might be able to raise a little bit of money for 24-7 while also creating a communications network that would promote prayer across the UK. We used those text messages to relay prayer points about international events, calls to prayer for specific persons in the movement and as a general way to give everyone a heads up about important events.
Unfortunately, that service ended up being much more expensive than we were told it would and the gains were minimal. Interest began to wain after a short time and we discontinued that service. It was a shame, because the idea had powerful potential to mobilise prayer.
It turns out that we could have simply been ahead of the available technology. In 2006, a bunch of "dot com" employees started a side project that came to be known as "Twitter". These guys thought there was some traction in the idea that although not everyone has the time, energy or interest in blogging; everyone does want to be connected with friends both far and near. If they could provide a way for people to answer the question "What are you doing?" in 140 characters, they might just start something big. No long-winded explanations of tying one's shoes on a Saturday morning or the composition of your latest tuft of belly button fluff. Just a couple of lines to let people know what you are doing. People could decide whether they wanted to receive your updates and "follow" you accordingly. In countries all around the world, people follow the sources most relevant to them and access information via Twitter as it happens—from breaking world news to updates from friends.
So why wouldn't 24-7 Prayer use this free network to once again get in closer contact with the wider movement? We again ask: what would happen if we had an immediate way to get vital information to a movement of people who pray? If you don't check 24-7prayer.com regularly because of time constraints, then this might be exactly what you've been looking for.
Want to know what to do next? It's really simple. Navigate over to twitter.com and sign up. Once you've done that, go to 24-7 Prayer's official page and click on "follow" (it's right below the nifty 24-7 logo on the upper left hand side) . It's that simple. If you live in the USA, India or Canada, you can also set up SMS updates to receive 24-7's updates directly on your mobile/cell phone. There are also many desktop clients/mobile phone apps that will let you receive twitter updates automatically. Pretty cool! We'll be in touch...
