What a difference a couple of months can make! Back at the beginning of December had any of us ever heard of Wordle? Judging by my social media feeds in the past few weeks, lots of my friends not only know about Wordle now, but they’re actively playing it and sharing their performance with the world.
For those of you who have somehow managed to miss the phenomenal rise of Wordle. It’s an online free word puzzle game created by a guy called Josh Wordle. But it’s not me hyping it up by using the words phenomenal rise, it had only 90 daily players in November, this had risen to 300,000 by the end of December and by the end of the first week in January it had risen to 2 million and judging by the increase I’ve witnessed in my social media it’s got to have grown way beyond that now. Then it was announced overnight that he has sold the game to a US media company for a seven figure sum. All that in just 3 months!
I am also inspired by the YouVersion Bible App. We have mentioned previously about it, developed by a church in the US who decided to give it away for free, it’s now installed on over 500 million devices around the world. They’re working with translators to make it available in more languages, they currently have 2,648 Bible versions available in 1,775 languages!
So why are Time2 blogging about Wordle? A few thoughts came to mind:
- It’s amazing how this game has created community and has expanded so rapidly.
- This guy has developed this game, launched it and reached so many users in months. What have I done to change the world?
- Millions of people are happy to share their academic prowess with the world, but not their faith.
- What can churches and individual Christians learn about using social media for good, in ways that engage people rather than being something that we hurriedly scroll past?
Wordle has grown through word of mouth, personal recommendation and through the fear of missing out. YouVersion also grew out of personal recommendations. We know that the New Testament church grew through word of mouth as well, people sharing their experiences, their testimony and that this has continued throughout the centuries since. Is this what we can all learn from Wordle today? Personal testimony works, people relate to other peoples stories! What stories are you telling and what stories are Time2 telling?
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