The world today is well acquainted with social media sites and apps such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Instagram, Foursquare… The list can go on and on - you name it! But recently, I discovered a pretty unique app called "Instapray" which shares prayers within its global community.
According to its webpage www.instapray.com, "Instapray is dedicated to building a global online community of happiness, love, and support. Our mission is to facilitate exchanges of inspiration, affection, and care among people through prayers". They also have an audacious vision to "become the world’s largest, most innovative, and happiest social prayer network". It seems to be a fairly new product launched in February or March 2013. Clearly, it has been pushing its efforts in major social media tools and has been growing vigorously by word-of-mouth.
The main feature of Instapray is to post prayer requests live, which are shown under its "Global" tab to any user. Under each prayer request, there are three buttons showing a choice of "Pray" for this prayer, how many times it has been prayed for by others, and a comment function. Surely, the @ mention function is enabled to engage users better in interaction. Furthermore, Instapray does not only allow the users to share their prayers instantly with the whole world, it also offers features such as groups (currently there are almost 150 groups to choose from and join), following other users, etc. You can keep track of who has prayed with you, and the updates of people you are following, as well as the ever renewing prayer requests posted by users all over the world.
According to its webpage www.instapray.com, "Instapray is dedicated to building a global online community of happiness, love, and support. Our mission is to facilitate exchanges of inspiration, affection, and care among people through prayers". They also have an audacious vision to "become the world’s largest, most innovative, and happiest social prayer network". It seems to be a fairly new product launched in February or March 2013. Clearly, it has been pushing its efforts in major social media tools and has been growing vigorously by word-of-mouth.
The main feature of Instapray is to post prayer requests live, which are shown under its "Global" tab to any user. Under each prayer request, there are three buttons showing a choice of "Pray" for this prayer, how many times it has been prayed for by others, and a comment function. Surely, the @ mention function is enabled to engage users better in interaction. Furthermore, Instapray does not only allow the users to share their prayers instantly with the whole world, it also offers features such as groups (currently there are almost 150 groups to choose from and join), following other users, etc. You can keep track of who has prayed with you, and the updates of people you are following, as well as the ever renewing prayer requests posted by users all over the world.
I would say this app is well designed, with very crisp colors, easy navigation and interaction, nice graphs and buttons. A look into the community, the engagement seems very high and genuine. And you don't have to suffer any commercial in this app; it is used for what it is designed for - prayers and prayers only. Within its short appearance in the market, it has already received quite some applauses over board - search for them yourself on Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest and more.
From a marketing/product perspective, this app definitely meets the need of a big niche market all over the world. It is not limited by language, time, location, age, gender… And yet it has a tremendous potential market to reach the biggest religious group in the world with over 2.1 billion believers that are identified as Christians. From a spiritual perspective, this app meets the eager and constant need of Christian believers to lift up one another within the Body of Christ through the power of prayers and encourage one another's spiritual development. It enables Revelational prayers across borders like never before and is a sure excitement for believers and particularly prayer warriors.
One question hovers over my head though: I wonder what is the next step for Instapray to better engage people while at the same time protect the users' privacy and identity when needed.
Sources:
Instapray: www.instapray.com
Christian population: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_religious_populations
From a marketing/product perspective, this app definitely meets the need of a big niche market all over the world. It is not limited by language, time, location, age, gender… And yet it has a tremendous potential market to reach the biggest religious group in the world with over 2.1 billion believers that are identified as Christians. From a spiritual perspective, this app meets the eager and constant need of Christian believers to lift up one another within the Body of Christ through the power of prayers and encourage one another's spiritual development. It enables Revelational prayers across borders like never before and is a sure excitement for believers and particularly prayer warriors.
One question hovers over my head though: I wonder what is the next step for Instapray to better engage people while at the same time protect the users' privacy and identity when needed.
Sources:
Instapray: www.instapray.com
Christian population: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_religious_populations