ldsWebguy

We are looking to hire a full-time Product Manager of LDS.org. Please pass this information along to anyone that you feel meets the requirements.

Product Manager of LDS.org

This person will manage the content and services on the official Church Web site LDS.org. It is a strategic position responsible for rigorously understanding the needs of end users (including leaders, members, and non-members) and developing and executing plans to meet these needs.

Applying candidates must have each of the following:

• Member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and currently temple worthy.
• Bachelor’s degree; masters preferred.
• 12+ years of technical product management experience that includes extensive experience managing and marketing corporate-level Web products and services.
• Extensive experience managing and marketing corporate-level Web products and services.
• Experience in monitoring, evaluating, and reporting on Web site use and effectiveness.
• Skill in developing business plans and requirements that shape the development and delivery of services to customers.
• Experience leading complex customer research and analysis of diverse audiences.

Exceptional candidates will have one or more of the following:

• Proven experience successfully managing product life cycles
• Good understanding of intellectual property rights as they relate to the Internet.
• Understanding of industry directions for developing and delivering content on the Web.
• Successful experience with search engine optimization.

A more complete job description can be found online at http://www.lds.org/emp/emp2.html (job listing #0600181). Please note that this position has been closed. See information on the new position of Manager of Internet Coordination.

As the Hispanic population in the US grows in size and influence, their use of the Internet also grows. A recent study found that there are more than 16 million Hispanic Americans online (55% of the total US Hispanic population), and 77% of those online have broadband access.

They use the Internet heavily for shopping: 77% use it to learn about brands and 72% go online to compare prices.

Beyond shopping, 43% of Hispanic US Internet users use it for social networking, 68% use instant messaging, 63% share photos, 52% read or post blogs, 40% talk on a phone using the Internet, and 48% visit news sites.

For more information on this subject, see eMarketer. They also have a more extensive report Hispanic Youth Online: Language and Culture Define Usage.

We recognize that visual aids are important in teaching and enhancing the spirit in our homes. The following downloadable, printable graphics can be found on Church Web sites in the following areas:

• Gospel Art Picture Kit. (On the Family Home Evening main page (under Home and Family), click Gospel Art Picture Kit. The Gospel Art Picture Kit is also available under Curriculum in the Gospel Library.)
• Newsroom. (Using the Advanced Search, remove the check mark from all the categories except Photos. In the Search field, enter a keyword or category, such as temples or families. Click the Search button.)
• Temples. (Select a temple to see pictures of that temple.)
• Scriptures. (See a listing of maps and photographs under Study Helps.)

We plan to add more Church-related pictures and art in the next few months.

Note (February 12, 2007): We have added an Image Libraries page to the Gospel Library.

The LDS Scriptures Internet Edition is now available in Spanish. We expect to release German, Italian, French and Portuguese before the end of the year.

The Internet Edition of the scriptures contains the searchable text, complete with footnotes, study helps, maps, and photographs. You can also mark selected scriptures for future reference.

Watching TV on a mobile phone could get more interesting in 2007 with TiVo-like recording functionality. Texas Instruments is demonstrating PVR (personal video recording) capabilities for mobiles at the International Broadcasting Convention in Amsterdam this week. This will let you record a TV program on your mobile phone and watch it later. The TI package also has “picture-in-picture” capabilities, so you can watch a prerecorded program and also track a live sports event in a smaller, on-screen window. Read more at InfoWorld.

We received the following feedback on LDS.org:

“Will Church News articles be searchable in the new lds.org site?”

I responded as follows:

“Sorry to say that articles published in the Church News will not be searchable in the new LDS.org site. That is because Church News is a publication of the Deseret News newspaper, and they make the full Church News available online only to subscribers. Read the explanation of that policy here.

“However, LDS.org does provide news created by the magazine editors.”

Did you know you can mark/bookmark scriptures with the new scriptures program at http://scriptures.lds.org? See http://scriptures.lds.org/en/search?type=marked for more information.

We received the following feedback at LDS.org:

“The site is an excellent resource.  However,  as a Sunday School Teacher it would be invaluable to be able to have all the available church videos/seminary videos etc in download format. I teach the youth using powerpoint presentations - so to be able to insert a movie into the lesson presentation would be absolutely fantastic. If possible please could you email me back to let me know what your future plans are in this area for development.”

I responded with the following message:

“Yes, we do plan to provide many Church videos in download format. We are now reviewing all the possible videos and getting the right permissions to provide them in digital form on the Internet. You can see the first one at http://videos.lds.org. We’ll add more to this page over the next few weeks and months.”

Bookslinger posted a great call to action on Bloggernacle:

“Call to action for bloggers: If you have a public counter/tracker, send Larry the URL. If you have a private one, or a private referral log, send him an occasional snap-shot if you think that LDS.org or Mormon.org should be getting some of those referrals from search engines.

“That may help him see what people are looking for, determine if it is something that the church websites could/should be offering, and how to craft or improve LDS.org and Mormon.org pages to rank better for those queries.

“If you are tech-savvy, set up something to ‘grep’ (filter) those logs, and send him just the referral entries from search engines. “

I would appreciate receiving any of the above at RichmanLL at ldschurch.org.

The new Gospel Topics section of the Gospel Library on LDS.org has an entry on “Internet” that has links to some valuable resources.