Monday, 20 October 2008 01:00 | and posted in SU Scotland
Saturday was ignite's first birthday! This time last year we officially launched ignite and welcomed our first members into our community area. Since then we have invited over 2,000 secondary-aged young people to join ignite's social network, all of whom have been on a week-long holiday with SU Scotland since July 2007. Around 60% of these young people have chosen to login at least once to ignite.
The summer months of June to September 2008 has been an exciting time for us which has seen ignite's popularity grow. 98 of our articles received 100 hits or more during this time frame, with 21 of them receiving over 200 hits each. The number of logins has increased too and we are now averaging 217 logins a month and close to 100 of these young people are choosing to login two or more times each month. August even saw 163 young people login at least twice!
So what does the next year hold? Well, we have recently been able to start inviting the secondary-aged teenagers who attend our Senior Weekends Away to join ignite. There are 24 weekends being held over the next 8 months which means that potentially an additional 700 secondary-aged teenagers are going to be invited to join ignite this year.
Any moment now we are due to launch personal blogs for members. This new functionality will enable all members to write their own blog and comment on other member's postings.
Just last week we upgraded the functionality of the forums and introduced an easier to use layout for them. Our hope is to similarly upgrade the profiles and the instant messaging within the next year as we seek to make ignite's community area better than ever.
ignite is far more than just a social network though and we have loads of great new content in development for public users and members to both enjoy. Starting in January our Daily Soundbites (short Bible thoughts that are posted daily) will be exploring the story of the Bible through the journeys made by biblical characters. There are Delve blog series planned on the topics of ‘Hearing from God,' ‘Forgiveness' and ‘Identity,' plus many others. A new category for Engage is being written which will contain feature articles on lifestyle choices, relationships and sex from a Christian perspective. More content for Seek's Q&A Corner and the Christian Basics section are currently being edited and will be published through the course of the year. As for our Play zone we'll be continuing to post funny pictures and videos as well as refreshing the music in our MP3 player shortly.
If you're a member and have any ideas for how we can improve ignite as we head into our second year please leave a comment below. If you're not a member and want to have a say then get in touch through our contact us page.
Thanks for using ignite! Sorry there's no cake left...
