Facebook Inc.took eight years to stage one of the most anticipated initial public offerings ever. The anticlimax came Friday, as Wall Street bankers struggled to prevent the newly minted stock from ending its first day with a loss.

he stock had been widely predicted to soar on its first day. Instead, up until the closing moments of the trading session, Facebook’s underwriters battled to keep the stock from slipping below its offering price of $38 a share. Such a stumble would have been a significant embarrassment, particularly for a prominent new issue like Facebook, the most heavily traded IPO of all time.

In the end, the bankers succeeded. When trading on Nasdaq ended at 4 p.m., the social network’s stock was up just a hair, 0.6%, at $38.23.

The roller-coaster day””Facebook’s shares started out jumping roughly 11%, before cooling off””was also beset by trading glitches and a 30-minute delay in the opening of trading. Nasdaq OMX Group Inc.didn’t respond to requests for comment.

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When Red Robin Gourmet Burgers introduced its new Tavern Double burger line last month, the company had to get everything right. So it turned to social media.

The 460-restaurant chain used an internal social network that resembles Facebook to teach its managers everything from the recipes to the best, fastest way to make them. Instead of mailing out spiral-bound books, getting feedback during executives’ sporadic store visits and taking six months to act on advice from the trenches, the network’s freewheeling discussion and video produced results in days. Red Robin is already kitchen-testing recipe tweaks based on customer feedback ”” and the four new sandwiches just hit the table April 30.

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In the American mind, renting has long symbolized striving””striving, that is, well short of achieving. But as we climb our way out of the Great Recession, it seems something has changed. Americans are getting over the idea of owning the American dream; increasingly, they’re OK with renting it. Homeownership is on the decline, and home rentership is on the rise. But the trend isn’t limited to the housing market. Across the board””for goods ranging from cars to books to clothes””Americans are increasingly acclimating to the idea of giving up the stability of being an owner for the flexibility of being a renter. This may sound like a decline in living standards. But the new realities of our increasingly mobile economy make it more likely that this transition from an Ownership Society to what might be called a Rentership Society, far from being a drag, will unleash a wave of economic efficiency

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There are now more than 3,000 talks going back to the 1960s when noted Anglican evangelical leader John Stott was still rector.

The archive is constantly being added to with all Sunday and midweek talks are available as routine on the website as well as via podcast.

However, a lack of “tags” ”” words added to files to allow visitors to search the archive”“means specific sermons are hard for visitors to find.

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The Anglican Communion faces a shortage of qualified communicators, according to an international Working Group on communications. The group””consisting of communications professionals from five continents””concluded that the Communion life was at risk of being detrimentally affected by some Provinces’ inability to source and share their news and stories widely.

“The narrative of the Body of Christ is very powerful,” said group member Revd Dr Joshva Raja “and currently the Anglican Communion is not properly equipped to share that narrative.”

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The Chinese government clamped down on activists and online media in the wake of the dramatic escape of a blind human-rights advocate from home imprisonment, an embarrassing development for Beijing that could complicate U.S.-China relations if he is found to be in U.S. protective custody.

At least three activists were detained following the escape last week of Chen Guangcheng, a legal advocate who has fought forced abortions under China’s one-child policy.

Meanwhile, popular Twitter-like microblogging service Sina Weibo blocked use of the words “blind man” and “UA898,” a United Airlines flight from Beijing to Washington that Mr. Chen was rumored to have taken out of China. News of his escape hasn’t appeared in major state-run media.

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The Church and New Media: Blogging Converts, Online Activists and Bishops Who Tweet has an implicit message that reminds me of the comment sometimes attributed to James Joyce ”” that the Catholic Church means “Here comes everybody.” Not just the Vatican, not just the bishops, not just the parish council, but everyone ”” for better and for worse.

And the blogosphere, increasingly, is everybody, too. Like nothing that I can think of in Church history, the blogosphere allows faithful Catholics to find each other for reciprocal inspiration, support, exchange and development of thought, sheer fellowship and for who knows what other purpose added in the last 24 hours.

As The Church and the New Media’s editor, Brandon Vogt, puts it, “a primary, defining characteristic of all new media is dialogue,” in sharp contract to the top-down format of print and film and, to a much lesser degree, radio.

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So you’ve accepted social media into your hearts and you’re beginning to employ them as part of your church’s communication strategy. What are the Gospel underpinnings for ministry in social media? Are your current efforts effective? Could they use a shot in the arm? What would that look like?

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When you write a post on Facebook about your sudden craving for blue cheese, an advertisement for gout prevention might suddenly pop up on your page. Post the phrase “bacon tidbits,” and you might get an ad for a book called “Forbidden Lessons in a Kabul Guesthouse.”

The robots are watching us. They’re announcing to the world that we just looked at Eames chairs on Pinterest and that we’ve listened to Taylor Swift and Conway Twitty on Spotify. They’re sending us ads labeled “Being Conservative in South Carolina” simply because we checked our e-mail in Charleston. They’re broadcasting the fact that we just read an article called “How to Satisfy Your Partner in Bed.” They’re trumpeting ”” with an undue amount of enthusiasm ”” that we just scored 6 points on Words With Friends for making the word “cat.”

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Christ Fellowship exemplifies most of the latest ways churches dramatically extend their reach of church beyond any one time or local address. Such congregations signal “a willingness to meet new challenges,” says Scott Thumma, of the Hartford Institute for Religion Research. He’s the author of a study by Faith Communities Today (FACT) of how churches, synagogues and mosques use the Internet and other technology.

FACT’s national survey of 11,077 of the nation’s 335,000 congregations, released in March, found seven in 10 U.S. congregations had websites, and four in 10 had Facebook pages by 2010, Thumma says.

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We are now in the middle of a long period of shuffling away. In his 2000 book Bowling Alone, Robert D. Putnam attributed the dramatic post-war decline of social capital””the strength and value of interpersonal networks””to numerous interconnected trends in American life: suburban sprawl, television’s dominance over culture, the self-absorption of the Baby Boomers, the disintegration of the traditional family. The trends he observed continued through the prosperity of the aughts, and have only become more pronounced with time: the rate of union membership declined in 2011, again; screen time rose; the Masons and the Elks continued their slide into irrelevance. We are lonely because we want to be lonely. We have made ourselves lonely.

The question of the future is this: Is Facebook part of the separating or part of the congregating; is it a huddling-together for warmth or a shuffling-away in pain?

Well before Facebook, digital technology was enabling our tendency for isolation, to an unprecedented degree. Back in the 1990s, scholars started calling the contradiction between an increased opportunity to connect and a lack of human contact the “Internet paradox….”

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Vicars and other church leaders in Leeds are being taught to Tweet and use other social networking systems as part of a campaign to improve communications between the clergy and congregations.

A free training programme designed to up-date vicars on new media communications has been launched by a Christian media organisation in a bid to bring clergy into the digital age.

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This year’s Easter service at the Tabernacle Church of God in La Follette, Tenn., will include many of the holiday’s traditional rituals, like Holy Communion and footwashing. There will also be some startling novelties.

“It will be filled with shouting, dancing, speaking in tongues, serpent handling and fire handling,” said its 21-year-old pastor, Andrew Hamblin. “We’ll celebrate the resurrection of Jesus Christ with a good old time.”

Since he opened its doors last fall, Mr. Hamblin’s small Pentecostal church, 39 miles north of Knoxville, has grown to almost 50 members, most of them in their 20s. Part of his strategy for expansion has been to use Facebook to publicize the daredevil spiritual exploits of his congregation.

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Theft of Internet service is on the rise, and experts say only a few of the culprits are being caught.

Many of the tech-savvy thieves get their free-ride through IP theft ”” the stealing of another person’s paid Internet access by tapping into their home router or cable modem. When someone uses your Internet connection for illegal activity, it could leave you as the unwitting target of a police investigation.

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Archbishop Aspinall told gatherers at St John’s Cathedral in central Brisbane that it “feels like darkness has engulfed the world”, using social media as an example.

“It turns ingenious technology with amazing potential for good into a weapon for bullying, brutality and destruction,” he said.

“Some of our young people are taking their own lives to escape the pain and others take a sinister delight in violence on YouTube grievously mistaking it for entertainment.”

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Surveillance means safety. This is the argument wherever and whenever governments seek new powers to monitor their citizens. Proposed legislation in the UK to enable police and intelligence services to access emails, Skype calls and Facebook messages is another such example. It is also another case of the unnecessary and dangerous expansion of state power, in collaboration with companies, into our online ”“ and offline ”“ lives.

The UK government has said that without a warrant it could only get “who, when and where” forms of data ”“ times, dates, numbers and addresses of communications ”“ not the content of emails, chat messages or Skype calls. The latter would still require a warrant, according to the government. Some critics are sceptical, and rightly so.

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Church leadership in the 21st century involves making numerous decisions about the future of ministry, frequently against a backdrop of rapid change and poorly understood but increasingly challenging circumstances.

For example, at the beginning of the 21st century, a number of churches are either in decline or (by contrast) are experiencing significant numerical growth.

Churches are facing major decisions as to whether to sustain or expand their present facilities, continue to minister in the same way, relocate to another community, disband or even sell their property and facilities.

Austerity measures and declining budgets further compound these issues.

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E-prayers, cabaret-style worship, video sermons and tongue-in-cheek advertisements are just some of the ways local Christian churches are boosting their numbers….

St Thomas’ Anglican Church in Werribee, which has the largest Karen refugee congregation in Victoria, is among them.

Its 150 Karen worshippers have breathed new life into a church that has been part of Werribee since 1856.

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Australians who spent a lot of time sitting at a desk or in front of a TV were more likely to die of any cause during a three-year period than those who were only sedentary a few hours a day, in a new study.

Researchers found that the link between too much time sitting and shortened lives stuck when they accounted for how much moderate or vigorous exercise people got as well as their weight and other measures of health.

That suggests shifting some time from sitting to light physical activity — such as slow walking and active chores — might have important long-term benefits, researchers said.

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California’s high-tech firms make the world’s most popular smartphones, social networks and search engines, but there’s one asset they’re struggling to build: trust.

The vast majority of Californians surveyed in a statewide poll are worried about the data collected by Internet and smartphone companies, and most said they distrust even firms known for their ardent fans and tens of millions of daily users.

Many of those surveyed in the latest USC Dornsife/Times poll also said they were wary of firms collecting personal information without their knowledge and concerned that personal data could become public or be harvested to sell them products.

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Be careful about the personal information and opinions you broadcast online, we are wisely and repeatedly told. Anyone from a prospective employer to an insurance company might be interested in details that you’ll regret divulging someday.

But employers cross a bright, hard line when they demand, as some do, that job applicants divulge their passwords to Facebook and other social media sites, or have them log on so the interviewer can scrutinize their likes and dislikes, their relationships, their photos, their friends’ personal information.

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Having wrestled with the best way to choose a new leader, the Church of England has decided to use the social networking site Twitter. It will also seek the views of people of all faiths and none, from the Chief Rabbi to Professor Richard Dawkins.

For the first time in history, the long and usually private process will begin with a widespread public consultation, to be finished by the end of May.

The Crown Nominations Commission, which must present the Prime Minister with two possible successors to Dr Rowan Williams, will also ask for contributions from “senior figures in other faiths, the secular world and the life of the nation”.

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Ray Ozzie, the man who succeeded Bill Gates as Microsoft’s tech visionary, believes the world has moved past the personal computer, potentially leaving behind the world’s largest software company.

The PC, which was Microsoft’s foundation and still determines the company’s financial performance, has been nudged aside by powerful phones and tablets running Apple and Google software, the former Microsoft executive said.

“People argue about ‘are we in a post-PC world?’. Why are we arguing? Of course we are in a post-PC world,” Ozzie said at a technology conference run by tech blog GeekWire in Seattle on Wednesday.

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The social-bookmarking site Pinterest has been around since 2010, but if you’re on Facebook you have probably noticed an upswing in people “pinning” things ”“ that is, posting found images under their names, in folders like “Clothes I’d Like to Own” or “Places I’d Like to Visit.” If you are a woman you are much more likely to have heard of it, as women so far have been its primary users. But business magazines are calling it the fastest-growing site ever: It now has 12 million unique visitors. With so much momentum, it is unlikely that women will hang on to it as their little secret for much longer.

Pinterest’s enthusiastic proponents say that there is nothing new about making collages of pictures that express our personalities: Most of us did it with cut-up magazines as children. But I think there is also something entirely contemporary about the kind of collecting that seems to dominate this site….

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For all her family’s generations of well-mannered breeding, Lizzie Post is not immune to the awkward moment. She was out to dinner not long ago with friends, and as the hour grew late, the wine flowed, and so did the foul language coming from her group. A man from another table came over and asked that they tone things down because he had children with him.

“I was really embarrassed,” winces Ms. Post, great-great-granddaughter of the legendary etiquette giant Emily Post.

But not so for one of her table mates. He said that it was the father who was out of line, that people curse, and that if the man wanted to take his children out in public, they’d better get used to it….

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It is an example of how hard it can be to keep your sources of information straight, even when you’ve only got two newspapers to mix up. Our own editorial board meetings are often punctuated with statements on the order of, “Gee. I know I saw that somewhere. Where did I read that? Or was it on NPR?”

Not only do we read a lot of newspapers, magazines and books, as editorial writers always have, now we’ve got websites and Twitter feeds to follow, and to keep straight.

And it is our job to follow this stuff. It’s going to be increasingly hard for people who just try to be good consumers of news and information to keep all these sources straight.

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Colleen Andrews, 24, a graphic designer from Far Hills, N.J., was spurred by a breakup: “I didn’t want to be tempted to look at his profile,” she said. She dumped her own Facebook profile in September.

Laura Amatulli, a senior at the College of New Jersey, has given up the site for Lent four times.

Dan Granados, 17, of Levittown, Pa., stopped using his account a few weeks ago. For him, it’s a personal challenge. “I just decided to deactivate it, see how long I could go.”

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Google says the changes will make it easier for consumers to understand how it collects personal information, and allow the company to create more helpful and compelling services. Critics, including most of the country’s state attorneys general and a top regulator in Europe, argue that Google is trampling on people’s privacy rights in its relentless drive to sell more ads….

Google is combining more than 60 different privacy policies so it will be able to throw all the data it gathers about each of its logged-in users into personal dossiers. The information Google learns about you while you enter requests into its search engine can be culled to suggest videos to watch when you visit the company’s YouTube site.

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The Episcopal Church has embraced the Internet to help its members embrace the Church. Among the features now available on its new website developed by Drupal developer Duo Consulting, church members can submit their prayers, view other prayers and ‘like’ prayers to offer their support. In addition to bringing information on missions, feasts, fasts, sermons and doctrine to its members, the Church also offers perspective for non-members on what the Church stands for and what it means to be Episcopalian.

The requirement to launch quickly, on budget and with a broad new and imaginative set of feature requirements dictated the Drupal open source content management platform and led the Church to Duo Consulting. The Episcopal Church and Duo worked together to construct a site that was easy for non-technical staff to manage. “The Duo team worked miracles, held our hands and delivered on time,” says Barry Merer, manager of web services and social media for the Episcopal Church.

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