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Vote for YouVersion in Mashable Awards

YouVersion, and the Bible, has a great opportunity to gain some mainstream visibility through the 2010 Mashable Awards. Thanks to all of your votes already we’ve made it to the top five finalists in the Best Mobile User Experience category. Now, with only 14 hours left to vote, we want to finish strong with a solid showing of YouVersion’s massive fan base.

So, if you have about 30 seconds today, go to the Mashable Awards page and vote for YouVersion in the category of Best Mobile User Experience. Just choose “Best Mobile User Experience” from the left dropdown menu and “@YouVersion” from the right dropdown menu. It should look like this:

And to all of you that have already voted multiple times over the past several weeks, thank you! We hope that the increased visibility will result in more people finding God’s Word on their phone.

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The Bible App Made iTunes’ 2010 Top Ten!

Every year, Apple announces the top 10 apps for the year in each category in the iTunes Store. This year, we’re thrilled to announce that the Bible App from YouVersion made the top 10 in the free Reference category! On both iPhone and iPad!

Apple’s lists don’t indicate rank. The above iPhone apps view shows the winners sorted by name. We’d also like to draw your attention to the Paul Avery Holy Bible app and Logos for iPad. Paul Avery’s Holy Bible made both lists, and Logos made the iPad list—and both are free Bible apps! How awesome is it that God’s Word claimed three of the top spots for free Reference apps in 2010?! (To discover more free Bible resources, check out this page we added to our website to highlight them.)

To see more of the lists, simply go to the iTunes Store and click the iTunes Rewind banner:

Look under the Apps section, and click on the “Check Out the Hot Trends in 2010 Apps” link for either iPhone or iPad, whichever one you’re interested in. Click the “Top Free” link, and then scroll to the Reference section and click “See All.”

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The Bible App – now on Chrome!

Google’s Chrome Web Store is an online marketplace with tools and applications designed specifically for use with the Google Chrome OS and browser. If you have a Google Chrome device, come check out YouVersion’s page for the Bible App in the store!

At YouVersion, our driving vision has always been to make the Bible easily accessible—for free—to anyone, any time, anywhere. The Bible App is already the number one application for engaging with the Bible on iPhone, iPad, Android, BlackBerry, Symbian, and webOS, with more than 11 million downloads so far. Now, when you download the free Bible App to your Chrome device, you’ll get all of its best-of-breed functionality—including more than 40 translations, in more than 20 languages, a growing list of reading plans, and connectivity to your social networks.

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Partnership to Reach Spanish Speakers

Recently we told you about the Bible App passing 11 million downloads. We’ve also shared how, so far, YouVersion users have spent more than 3.5 billion minutes reading the Bible. Of course we couldn’t be happier to see numbers like these. But there are some other numbers you should also know about. Recent polls indicated most people (more than 70%) felt it was important to know more about the Bible. But even among those people who said they thought they ought to read the Bible, most also admitted that they rarely do—with many even saying they didn’t read it at all.

Clearly, we need to make it even easier for people to engage with God’s Word. We need to get it into more hands. Today we’re pleased to announce a new partnership intended to do just that. The American Bible Society (ABS) is introducing an exciting campaign, called Descubre La Biblia, to promote Bible engagement within the Spanish-speaking community. As part of that plan, ABS is joining with YouVersion to launch the Bible App in Spanish, which will feature several of the world’s best-known Spanish Bible translations including the Reina Valera 1960.

If you have any friends who speak Spanish, we’d love for you to share the Bible App with them. To access YouVersion.com in Spanish, simply visit http://es.youversion.com/, or choose “Español” from the language selection box in the lower left corner of the site. (Users who already have Spanish (Español) selected as their language of choice on their device will automatically see the Bible App in Spanish.)

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You’re on a Roll!

Thank you. In the two weeks since we shared the huge goal of reaching 1 billion minutes of Bible engagement in January 2011, YouVersion users have proven what we’ve known all along: you guys rock! You’ve gone above and beyond in responding to each of the ways you could help, and it is working as we see momentum building toward January.

11 million devices. Last week we passed another significant milestone: the Bible App has been installed on more than 11 million mobile devices! When you let others know about the Bible App, you’re introducing them to something that can help them hear from God no matter where they are.

Please keep voting for us at Mashable. We just got word about some more exciting news: your votes in the 4th Annual Mashable Awards propelled us into the final round! We are one of five finalists in our category: Best Mobile User Experience. Now the fun really starts 🙂 We’re facing some stiff competition and the next round of voting lasts just two weeks, so we have until December 15 to stack up the votes. It would be awesome to see God’s Word take home the trophy at one of the top awards events in the tech community. We’d love for you to join us in voting daily!

Christmas Reading Plan starts today. Finally, we’ve got lots of things rolling out to make your Bible reading experience better and better. One we’re particularly excited about today is the launch of a Christmas Reading Plan. It’s a 25-day plan that will help you stay focused on what’s important this season. You can read through it on your own or share it with your family or small group.

We’re so thankful to share this season with you. The YouVersion community is the tops, and we appreciate your partnership in helping more and more people become captivated by God’s Word.