DittyTalk.com Is a social netwroking website for Christian community.
Title
Christian MySpace Alternative - Ditty Talk
Description
Excerpted from the website:
- Welcome to DittyTalk.com, a Christian owned and operated site, and also is a ministry of the local church. Doctrinally, we believe Jesus Christ is God! He is coming for us very soon where we will spend eternity with Him in Heaven. Until then, we have been called to love sacrificially in a servant kind of manner while living in a perfect balance of mercy and truth.
Ditty Talk is a Christian Social Networking website offering a MySpace style interactive, user-submitted network of friends, personal profiles, blogs, forums, journals, groups, photos, music, and videos. Ditty Talk was started by Bible College teacher, Brian Bozarth, in order to provide a cleaner, safer, more godly environment than the much larger MySpace.
According the Terms of Service, all users must agree to believe, or at least agree to not argue with, the Statement of Faith list on that website. For that reason, nearly all of the users are born again Christians.
Ditty Talk is a full time ministry that is user supported since it’s foundation in Kihei, Maui. Ditty Talk attracts a couple hundred new registrations every day and is currently at 15,000 members.
Ditty Talk Logo
History
The current Ditty Talk website was founded in January 2006 by Brian Bozarth (a bible college teacher at Calvary Chapel Bible College in Maui), and a small team of pastors, programmers and friends who helped pray and program for the site.
Contents of a Ditty Talk profile
Blurbs, Blog, Multimedia
Profiles contain two standard "blurbs": "About Me" and "Who I'd Like to Meet" sections. Profiles also contain an "Interests" section and a "Details" section. A user is able to hide/reveal any aspect of their Profile from all visitors, users or friends. Profiles also contain a blog with standard fields for content, emotion, and media. Ditty Talk also supports uploading images. One of the images can be chosen to be the "default image," the image that will be seen on the profile's main page, search page, and as the image that will appear to the side of the user's name on comments, messages, forums, blogs etc. Ditty Talk has also added the option to upload mp3 music songs that are played via a standalone Ditty Talk Flash player.
Friends
The User's Friends contains a count of a user's friends and a link to view all of the user's friends. Users can choose how their friends are ordered by Popularity, Length of time on Ditty Talk or Length of friendship with the user.
Comments
The Comments section allows the user's friends to comments for all viewers to read. Ditty Talk users have the option to delete any comment and/or require all comments to be approved before posting. If a user's account is deleted, every comment left on other profiles by that user will be deleted.
Profile customization
Ditty Talk allows users to modify their user pages. Although JavaScript is not allowed, HTML/XHTML and CSS can be used to change the vast majority of the profile to the user's preference. Users also have the option to add embedded music into their profiles from Ditty Talk Musicians, a service that allows bands to post songs onto their respective profiles. Videos, flash-based content, and almost anything else can be added, much like a standard HTML page. Since many users of Ditty Talk do not know HTML, Ditty Talk has created an online Profile Generator that will take certain colors, images, table settings, etc. that a user can paste into their “About Me” section to change the appearance of their profile.
Ditty Talk features
Software
The company's servers are all running on Linux / Apache machines.
Journals
Journals are messages that are sent out to everyone on a Ditty Talk user's friends list. Journals can be useful for notifying an entire friends list, without resorting to messaging users individually. Some users choose to use Journals as a service for delivering chain messages about politics, religion, or anything else.
Groups
Ditty Talk has a Groups feature which allows a group of users to share a common page and message board.
Events
Ditty Talk allows users to add Events to their own personal calendar, or add public events for all the users on Ditty Talk.
Classifieds
Ditty Talk also offers a section for users to buy/sell online.
Ditty Talk Statement of Faith
Before a user is allowed to join, or post anywhere on Ditty Talk, they are reminded of the Ditty Talk Statement of Faith. Users do not have to agree with the Statement, but they are told not blatantly disagree, argue or accuse Ditty Talk of heresy over the Statement of Faith. The Statement of Faith:
JESUS CHRIST is the foundation and cornerstone of the church. He came to restore man's broken relationship with God. His finished work on the cross made that possible. Because of His love demonstrated on the cross by dying for our sins, we now have reason to fellowship with one another and proclaim salvation through His life, , and resurrection.
(1 Corinthians 3:11, Ephesians 2:20, Romans 5:6-10)
THE TRINITY: We believe that God is eternally existent in three distinct persons: Father, Son and Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit = Jesus = God. As God said in Gen 1:26. "Let us make man in our image" so too, we are created in His image as a triune being (1 Thes 5:23). Even as God (Elohim - plural) created (singular) the heaven and earth (Gen 1:1), we believe that by (en - in) him (Jesus) were all things created (Col 1).
(Matthew 3:16-17, Luke 3:21-22, John 14:26, Galatians 4:6, Ephesians 2:18, 1 Peter 1:2, 1 John 5:7)
THE BIBLE is the inspired, infallible word of God and is relevant and applicable to man today. Therefore we place great emphasis upon teaching it in public, studying it in private, and using it as a guide for our daily lives. We believe in the 66 books of the Bible canon.
(1 Timothy 4:13, 2 Timothy 3:16-17, 1 Thessalonians 2:13)
WORSHIP - We believe God is worthy of all praise, reverence, and love. We take special time to worship Him in church through song. It is our goal to worship Him with our whole lives as well; at home, at work, and at play.
(John 15:5, Romans 8:29, Ephesians 4:15)
CHRISTIAN GROWTH - Our supreme desire is to know Jesus and to be conformed to His image, likeness, and example by the power of the Holy Spirit. We encourage this by abiding in Jesus Christ through His Word, prayer, fellowship, and by yielding our lives to the Holy Spirit.
(John 4:23 Colossians 3:16, 1 Thessalonians 2:13)
LOVE is the greatest virtue and demonstration of the reality of Christ Jesus. We endeavor to show a Christ-like love to all men. Love should be exhibited in our lives by our words as well as our actions.
(John 13:34-35, 1 Corinthians 13:13, Phillipians 2:3-5)
CHRISTIAN SERVICE is a part of the Christian life and is the responsibility of all believers. Our goal is to develop the ministry of every member to the benefit of all.
(Ephesians 4:11-13, 1 Corinthians 12:4-7)
