Massive growth…and the impact you are feeling!

Over the past few months YouVersion has been growing at an explosive rate, and for that we thank you! Many of you might not realize, but in the last 30 days we have added over 1/2 million new mobile users to the iPhone, Blackberry and Android Bible application and that continues to grow. In addition to those new users, we are seeing significant growth in mobile web usage as well as traditional web usage of YouVersion.com. We are excited to see so many millions of people interacting regularly with Scripture.

However, with the great news of new users…and people being able to engage in Scripture, the reality is we have had a few rough days this month, specifically on Sundays. As we see huge amounts of people using the Bible Application our core server infrastructure has not been able to handle the peak load. What we want you as our users and partners to know is we are very sorry for this issue. We are highly committed to addressing these current problems, and building a solution that will have the capacity to handle millions and millions of new Bible users each month. We have already made some major changes and improvements this afternoon, as well as initiated a plan to triple our server infrastructure.

As challenging as these past few days have been…we are excited and encouraged about the future. The idea of reaching hundreds of millions if not billions of people with the power of God’s Word is unfolding as a reality! We thank you for partnering with us and ask for your continued prayers and support as we continue this exciting journey.

New Living Translation Available Offline for iPhone/iPod Touch

We’ve been looking forward to this announcement for some time and I’m glad to be able to finally tell you about a new addition to the growing list of offline-available Bible translations for the iPhone and iPod Touch Bible app. Thanks to Tyndale House Publishers, the New Living Translation is now available to download so you can enjoy it anytime and anywhere, whether you have a network connection or not.

We’re highlighting this addition specially because you’ll have a limited amount of time to take advantage of it. The NLT will be available for download for 90 days and will remain there forever (unless you delete the Bible app from your device, heaven forbid). Again, we want to thank Tyndale House Foundation for their generosity in making the NLT available offline for this time.

To download the NLT, or other offline translations, open the Bible app on your iPhone or iPod Touch (make sure you have a network connection) and tap the “More” option in the dock at the bottom. From there, go to Settings, then Offline Translations. Scroll down about half way and select New Living Translation from the list of options. Then tap Download Translation and the app will begin downloading the offline translation for you.

NLT Offline

The download may take a few seconds or minutes depending on the speed of your connection, but once it’s finished the NLT will show at the top of the Offline Translations list. When you’re reading the Bible, to switch to an offline translation, just open the translation selector (near the top of the reader) and look for the translation that has the little icon to the left of it.

Thank you for using the YouVersion Bible app. More than 3.3 million people have installed YouVersion on their mobile device. Know anyone who could us a free Bible on their phone? Send them to http://youversion.com/download.