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GodTube: Christian Web site is on the rise
GodTube, whose Internet viewership has soared in the four months since its debut – it already claims to be “the largest Christian Web site on the planet” – is reaching higher.
It isn’t casting aside popular videos such as the little girl reciting Psalm 23 (more than 4.8 million views) or the rap parody “Baby Got Book” (more than 625,000 views).
But the video-sharing and social-networking site is launching some higher-tech features this month that will help churches and individuals get their messages out into the world.
Chris Wyatt, chief executive officer and co-founder of GodTube, projects that those and other efforts will boost traffic and attract 5 million to 7 million unique viewers in December.
GodTube’s new Godcaster program, already tested by a few hundred churches, allows churches to stream live video of their services, sermons and testimonials over GodTube for viewing anywhere. Then the viral software lets churches take that video from GodTube and embed it in their own Web sites, said Wyatt, whose company is based in Plano, Texas.
Using its new viral video blog, individuals and churches can easily record up to 30 minutes of video directly to Web pages on GodTube, leaving video messages much like voice-mail messages for friends or a more general audience, he said.
Those services will be free at a basic level; those who want more recording time will pay a fee.
Wyatt, 38, is about one year into a four-year program to get a master’s degree in theology at Dallas Theological Seminary.
But he’s having trouble carving out time for studies because GodTube took off so quickly after its launch in August, becoming one of the fastest-growing Web sites in the United States, according to comScore, a company that measures Internet use.
Prior to starting GodTube, Wyatt spent about 10 years as a producer on daytime shows and “reality” shows for CBS and other networks, and then designed video file-sharing systems for social-networking and other purposes.
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Is there anything significant about GodTube that is being overlooked?
A lot of attention gets paid to the growth of the Web site. A quarter of a million people, approximately, have signed up to our social network, and we launched it (about two months) ago.
That’s pretty significant. Who it is, I think, is even more significant. We have about 25,000 churches that are signed up. It’s individuals and pastors.
So, really, we are acting as the infrastructure for a lot of churches right now in terms of their online video and delivering their online content.
I think that’s really important. People aren’t picking up on the fact that a good portion of the 800,000 hours of video that we have is being uploaded by churches and embedded into their church Web site or their church blog.
There’s kind of a huge church growth in that area that people really aren’t seeing. They’re more interested in the little girl in Psalm 23, but they’re not really seeing what I think is a ripple which will become a tidal wave of churches going to GodTube.
