Tuesday, February 24, 2009

Lions on YouTube and MySpace, Oh My!

From the January/February 2009 Border Crossing

On June 30, 2008, LCI launched it's YouTube channel with the banner slogan "We Give..We Share...We Inspire...We Serve!" This service uses video clips from the Lions Quarterly Journal to show the "YouTube Generation" just how cool it is to serve the world as Lions, and invites "YouTubers" to respond with their channel comments and with comments on the various videos. And respond they have! The Lions channel has 30,000 channel views, over a thousand friends and some five hundred subscribers. As it happens, MD19 is well represented in this outreach effort. The LQ Christmas Ship video is the fifth most watched on the web site. Visit www.youtube.com/lionsclub.org.

MySpace offers LCI a somewhat broader pallet with which to paint a picture of Lions activities across the world. There is space set aside to promote our relationship with other nonprofits, such as the Special Olympics, Habitat for humanity, and the Carter Center. We also find out the LCI's official zodiac sign is a Gemini. Did not know that? There is also a Lions Blog page where LCI announces breaking events. At the beginning of last December--yes, you guessed it!--the LQ Christmas Ship video was the featured blog entry. My space offers many different kinds of spaces in which to operate and, thus far, LCI has exploited only a few. So in the future, look for an even greater presence on MySpace, perhaps in the photo and video gallery sections, and on the events on the forums pages. Visit www.myspace.com/lionsclubsorg.

LCI is also on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Lions-Clubs-International/27922222491

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