The ultimate convergence: religion online
Steve Safran March 13th, 2007
The web’s power to link communities is nowhere more apparent than it is among religious groups. You’ve seen religious sites, faith-based community sites and places of cyber worship. But dig (or Digg) this stat from WaPo:
“…the number of Web pages dealing with God, religion and churches increased from 14 million in 1999 to 200 million in 2004. Religion now nearly rivals sex as a topic on the Internet: A search for “sex” on Google returns about 408 million hits, while a search for “God” yields 396 million.
As we saw here at LR when we posted about James Cameron’s investigation into “The Lost Tomb of Jesus” all you need to do is mention religion and you’ll draw in people you’ve never even had visit your site before. Online faith discussion is a worldwide phenomenon:
“Some sites offer rites from baptism to confession to conversion to Judaism… Sikhs listen to podcasts of prayers… (and Muslims download schedules of prayer times and recordings of sung verses from the Koran.”
The article focuses on Saranam.com, a website in India that sells Hindu pujas - ritual ceremonies - to be performed at distant temples.
5 Comments Add your own
1. Dave | March 13th, 2007 at 10:47 pm
Makes sense to me. Personally, I read at least three different Christian sites every day or so.
Religion is niche, but a BIG niche. It’s too bad a lot of media companies today tend to either ignore religion or just relegate discussion of it to politicized topics like abortion, gays, terrorism, and science. But as the American philosopher Homer Simpson once said, “Meh… what are ya gonna do?”
2. Safran | March 14th, 2007 at 5:15 am
I’m not even sure it’s a niche. It’s huge.
Wikipedia: “Niche marketing is the process of finding and serving small but potentially profitable market segments and designing custom-made products or services for them.”
There’s nothing small about religion or the service industry that has sprouted around it. And you’re right - it remains underserved and still has tremendous opportunity.
3. The Tony | March 14th, 2007 at 6:44 am
I prefer when religion is used to challenge people, as in the case of the Tomb of Jesus special, as opposed to it being used to control people.
That said…eh, not for me.
If it makes me niche not to believe in superghosts, so be it.
4. Joe | March 14th, 2007 at 6:57 am
You know, I’ll bet a lot of topics have gone from low pageviews in *1999* to a metric ton in 2004.
And as for the line comparing keyword searches on “sex” and “god”… come on. How many times does Johnny Weblogger type “god” in an entry and have nothing to do with religion, compared to how many times that same author types “sex” and have nothing to do with sex?
Here, I’ll pump up the god-views a little more: god, god, god, god.
5. Dr. Mohamed Taher | March 20th, 2008 at 5:49 pm
I have published a full book on the subject of online worship: Cyber Worship in Multifaith Perspectives, (2006)
We are in the same boat, I suppose.
Best wishes.
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