During GodTube’s brief but well-publicized lifespan, it was one of the most polarizing Christian sites on the Web. Many people loved it; many didn’t. The name itself—GodTube—is a microcosm of what made the site so controversial. In one sense, GodTube is a great name. Anyone familiar with YouTube (one of the most visited websites on the planet) knew immediately what GodTube was about. And for those to whom a Christian version of YouTube sounded like an ideal online destination, GodTube delivered. Others resented the GodTube moniker for its imitative and oversimplified nature. Either way, GodTube and its exhortation to “Broadcast Him” are gone. In its place sprouted Tangle (www.tangle.com), a site that layers social networking and other media on top of GodTube’s video foundation.
So what’s with the new name? CEO Trey Bowles explains: “We wanted first and foremost a name that had social media built into it. The idea of being intertwined and interwoven in community, that’s what social media is, right? On top of that, we tied everything into a scriptural background. In John 15:5 Jesus says, ‘I am the vine and you are the branches. Abide in me and you will bear much fruit.’ That’s why the logo is green. That’s why the letters in the logo are connected, with the exception of the ‘T’ which is separated out to represent the cross, or a ‘Christian angle’ to online community.”
Like GodTube, Tangle invites users to upload family-friendly videos, but that’s only a fraction of what the new site has set out to accomplish. “Tangle is an online community platform that helps unite the body of Christ online. We create the tools that enable our users to upload photos and videos, create blogs, create a presence online, and then share their content. On Tangle, you’re able to connect with other Christians all over the world, and through that process you’re growing your relationship with Christ and with other people. In the end, we’re a platform on which people can build community around content.”
That begs the question, what kind of content belongs on a site for Christians? With GodTube, the implication was that users should only upload their God-centric videos to the site. Tangle is taking a somewhat wider stance.
“Ultimately, the content doesn’t have to be [explicitly] Christian,” Bowles says. “It doesn’t have to be sermons and Christian videos. It can be your daughter’s ballet recital or a baseball game or dogs rolling around on the floor and running into the walls. It can be anything that’s positive and has a family-friendly component because we, as Christians, don’t speak in sermons all day long, right? We consume. We go to movies. We buy laundry detergent. We’re just the same as everybody else. We just have a different basis for where we’re coming from.”
This new perspective on content—safe and edifying, but not necessarily religious—complements Tangle’s focus on interaction. Whereas GodTube was a destination for viewers of Christian content, Tangle has established itself as a destination for Christian interaction. So far, the shift appears to have resonated with a sizable audience. While pockets of Christians interact on blogs, message boards, and Facebook groups, none of them compare to the pure mass or metrics of Tangle. The site hosts a ton of content (more than 300,000 videos), but it’s the 750,000 registered users and three million monthly site visits that will help Tangle realize its goal of uniting the body of Christ online. The Tangle community is also supplemented by about 13,000 church and ministry profiles around which users can gather and interact.
According to Bowles, the interaction of the Tangle community takes several forms. “It’s everything from people commenting on a video to people posting blogs and sending those blogs out to their community of friends. People directly invite their friends to join them on Tangle and create an online Bible study through the online Bible that we have. It’s an interesting environment for people to come and seek strength and encouragement and laughter and joy—all the elements that come with being a part of this body or a part of any family.”
This kind of online interaction facilitates what Bowles calls a “boundary-less church”—a church that isn’t limited by geography, bandwidth, or the high price of cutting edge technology. People far and wide can access, upload, and share media and participate in conversations, all hosted by Tangle and subsidized by Google ads. Bowles also hopes Tangle will increase offline interaction as friends use the site to communicate. He still believes in the power of face to face conversation, and he’d love it if a Tangle video or blog post could give friends something to talk about.
With that in mind, Tangle is going to improve the tools that it offers to churches in 2010 in hopes of strengthening online and offline connections. “We are going to make it easier for people to find and create community online,” Bowles says. Beyond churches, Bowles believes Tangle’s new tools will benefit ministries, non-profits, and artists who want to create and empower online communities.
Of course, questions about Tangle remain. For Christians already using Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Flickr, and other tools to share media and communicate, what role will Tangle play? Can the site strike an appropriate balance between value for users and value for advertisers? Who is Tangle for? Will young and old, mainline and evangelical, tech-savvy and newbie engage with it?
Only time will tell whether Christians of all shapes, sizes, ages, places, and denominations decide to embrace a platform like Tangle. However, what we can be sure of now is that to the extent Tangle manages to catalyze community, interaction, and spiritual growth among its members, it’s a viable option as we try to figure out what the Church looks like, online and offline, in the 21st century.
UPDATE: As of a couple weeks ago, GodTube.com is back. Its current iteration focuses primarily on video while leaving the content-plus-social-networking approach to Tangle.
Scott McClellan is the Editor of COLLIDE.