Social networks - especially for youth

[xsrossiter-p40]

Hi,

If any group of people in the world needed the power of social networks it would be LDS youth.

Why not have a calling at the local level to voluntarily profile a youth's interests and then let them find similar people to visit in person or interact with online.

For example, Jane likes to ride horses and Julie 30 miles away does also. By themselves they may never find each other but through interest profiling they may become lifelong friends with common standards of conduct.

All of this of course could work with any age group but first on the list should be the youth who at times are alone in their classes with such high expectations of behavior.

Steve

[kennethjorgensen]

Hi,

If any group of people in the world needed the power of social networks it would be LDS youth.

Why not have a calling at the local level to voluntarily profile a youth's interests and then let them find similar people to visit in person or interact with online.

For example, Jane likes to ride horses and Julie 30 miles away does also. By themselves they may never find each other but through interest profiling they may become lifelong friends with common standards of conduct.

All of this of course could work with any age group but first on the list should be the youth who at times are alone in their classes with such high expectations of behavior.

Steve

It's a very interesting idea with "interest profiling". Maybe its one to develop as an app for Facebook. I like the idea in Facebook about closed groups and mix that together with a specific application and then you have local area groups according to their interests.

I see several places where individuals have created Stake Youth groups on Facebook so there is possible mileage in individual techy members taking up the challenge.

[vernondcole]

The difference here would be a safety factor. If I am communicating with someone who has a Church login ID, there is much less chance that the "15 year old girl" is really a 50 year old child molester. Facebook has no real knowledge about who a person is -- the bishop does. While not perfect (thinking of Ted Bundy here) Ward membership is one indicator that a person MIGHT be trustworthy, and at least we would know that the age and sex of an individual was not falsified.

[faazshift]

Yeah. An LDSAccount API would be awesome, perhaps utilizing the OpenID protocol or something for verification. It would be nice to have local level youth networking.

[derekr44]

I am in the process of setting up a Facebook-style site for people interested in sports leagues in the Phoenix East Valley. It's based on the Joomla Content Management system with the fantastic JomSocial component.

In terms of security, it is very possible to program a Joomla plugin that supports the use of LDS Member IDs in order to restrict registrations and enhance security.

[mkmurray]

In terms of security, it is very possible to program a Joomla plugin that supports the use of LDS Member IDs in order to restrict registrations and enhance security.

The Church has not yet released any API or web service in which programmers can authenicate "LDS Member IDs;" the likely candidate if this were to happen in the future would be the LDSAccount ID system.