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The church already asks for no personal church sites off the church's own site (like a church in Enid, OK having their own website not on lds.org) and only has a large pressance on the net with it's belief site and genealogical research.
If anything, church members maybe buying into the stock, which is like saying any religious person buying stock in Microsoft or Apple or other company. They want to make money too.
Also, the church has a great PR department. Why haven't you contacted them about the story? I don't quite understand why you place a rumor as news without talking to the other parties about it. It's still early enough in the day to contact them.
Also, if they did get in contact with you and give you information that you couldn't put up in time, I can blame the editor for over zealous posting before all sides were contacted. I've had that happen before.
W/r/t "overzealous posting" -- this is the blogosphere and anyway, my angle was that this is probably not true.
"Though some think our church is taking over the world, the church would never buy things that will not help members in the church."
I have quick question for you. How is the 1 billion dollar mall your church is building going to help your members? Make no mistake you belong to a corparation not a religion.
You seem to be insulted that someone would say that LDS Inc. would buy facebook. Have you ever looked at how much your "church" owns? I think it would be a good investment.
I live in Utah and what worries me is that your corparation will buy Facebook, and then ruin it. Not on purpose, just try to enforce some barbaric kind of moral code on the site.
Just because your PR department says you don't teach that anymore, I mean that it is not true, does not mean it is not true. Eric said it was a rumor, get over your self.
I'll play your game though. LDS church buys facebook and adds a moral code to it. Everyone moves to Bebo or Friendster due to the issues. Everyone moved from MySpace after issues, what makes you think that it can't happen to facebook?
Also, your mall comment, in the early years, the mall was needed to increase the economy of the state and the members. I recall a huge majority of Utah was mormon at that time. If you mean a new one today, I'll look into it (I live in Seattle). I have the sense not to comment on something I don't know a lot about.
As for whether it could ruin Facebook, how could the LDS Church possibly ruin Facebook more than it already is? It's a wasteland of noise and silly applications, and only recently has attempted to grow up. Heck, I'd love to have *any* grown-up organization take over Facebook to make something useful of it. Take your pick: the Vatican, the mafia, Microsoft, ACLU, or you name it. I don't really care. Just someone that thinks there's more to social networking than status messages like "Away for the day, wondering if life could get any better."
B) The City Creek Center Project (mall, residences and surrounding greenspace) will include the ZCMI department store that the church started back in 1868. Yes, our religion is also a corporation, and real estate makes good business sense. However, what everyone seems to conveniently overlook is that money goes BACK into the church providing an astounding amount of services for, not only it's members, but the entire community. Had you been to downtown SLC? Did you seen how DEAD it was? A lot of empty buildings in the middle of downtown. Quite sad. The City Creek Center, whether you agree with giant commercial/residential/green spaces or not, is meant to help revitalise the downtown area...and, OF COURSE, make money. Our business acumen is what made Salt Lake City *and* saved our Mormon heineys from homelessness and poverty! So, don't hate us because we make sound business decisions! :D
Like the poster above said, if you want to find out about this, check with the LDS Church's professional PR department.
Or, you can chalk this up to other rumors about the LDS Church owning PepsiCo or as one person told me, "cheese" (as in -- all cheese?). This one, as the physicist said, "isn't even wrong." There aren't any facts here to get right. I'd expect VB to get _some_ facts before posting.
I think I was clear in my original post about what facts I knew and didn't know. It's an interesting enough story, with enough suggestions of fact, that I thought our readers should know about it.
that. VentureBeat I respect for good, factual stories - I appreciate
that. Stories like this you're welcome to run - it just takes away
from the informal articles I'm used to.
"This rumor has no foundation whatsoever.
Lyman Kirkland
Church Public Affairs"
Way to go on the due diligence before posting, Eric. Maybe you'd like to follow-up with some odd rumors about the English royal family being lizard-people, or Jews being in a plot to take over the world?
Most mergers and acquisitions at the level are bizarre, this one just a bit more than usual. The rumor was semi-credible, and if we had the same rumor at Mashable, we likely would have run with it as well.
Since you are so eager to publish wild, unsubstantiated rumors like this, I will start forwarding you all the email I get about Bill Gates sharing his money with those who forward on email messages, how Jamie Lee Curtis is a hermaphrodite, and lots of other great rumors to publish simply on the basis you heard it but have no clue as to whether there is any truth to it.
@Eric as a Mormon, a blogger, twitterer, a New Yorker and social media strategist...I think your postings are great! (yes, I did just make that obnoxious "as a" statement) :)
All of that said, the idea still made me laugh. I honestly assumed that it was a comedy when one of the sources was Zach Klein, employed at comedy site CollegeHumor. I was just surprised the story was on VentureBeat and not CollegeHumor.
i thought the LDS church had holdings of at least $29.38.
it's just my thought and opinion.
which is, btw, just as good as any other opinion.
i especially like to read about people who know people who know, or think they know, some insider in some org who thinks he/she knows ........(fill in the blank)................
blogs are ........(fill in the blank)................
L. Ron Hubbard says: "Celebrities are very Special people and have a very distinct line of dissemination. They have communication lines that others do not have and many medias [sic] to get their dissemination through."
Clearly, the Church of $cientology, in an attempt to build the largest virtual Celebrity Centre ever seen by man, is bidding on Facebook *and* MySpace to build a fleet of poorly maintained MySpace celebrity profiles, artist pages, and lots and lots of seizure-inducing flashy graphics and scrolling text. It will be the highest bid ever made for the world's first and second greatest collection of bad grammar and poor spelling. Oh, and zombies and werewolves.
We'll have to pay the Church to make the epileptic attacks stop.
http://www.pcworld.com/article/131340-6/the_top...
Good times...good times.
http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/metro/200810...
http://www.abercrombieshop.us