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Lifeway & YouVersion Partner to Help Thousands of Churches

From Bible publishers to foreign media organizations, many first-rate organizations have teamed up with YouVersion as we work together to help millions engage with the Bible in new ways. We’re pleased to announce another strategic partnership, as YouVersion becomes a part of Lifeway’s Digital Church initiative.

Digital Church is a collection of web-based services endorsed by LifeWay Christian Resources to help churches and ministries to become more efficient and effective growing their church and the Kingdom. By recommending trusted solutions, LifeWay allows churches to focus on leveraging technology for ministry.

We’re honored to be included in LifeWay’s Digital Church initiative and look forward to equipping even more churches with the innovative Scripture engagement tools offered by YouVersion. In addition to YouVesion’s online and mobile Bible, churches can take advantage of YouVersion Live for mobile interaction during events like church services, youth events, and more.

We’re excited about this partnership and the great relationship between YouVersion and Lifeway. We know that God will use this connection for great things in His Kingdom.

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NEW! Introducing Profiles on Palm Pre/Pixi

A new version of the YouVersion Bible app for Palm Pre/Pixi was made available last week in the Palm App Catalog and brings lots of brand new features that I’m really excited to tell you about. Because of the speed of development for WebOS, Palm has turned into the proving grounds for great features for YouVersion. That means that our Palm app is likely to be a preview of what you’ll see very soon in all of our other apps.

Introducing Profiles
The biggest new component in the Palm app is the section called “Profiles”. The Profiles component is a full experience where you can interact with all of your YouVersion friends, information (Contributions, Likes, Tags, etc.), and activity streams. The best explanation of Profiles is that it puts the entire YouVersion community in the palm of your hand.

It’s such a big update that all it would take too long to explain all of the capabilities of the Profiles component here. You’ll just have to download it and check it out for yourself to get a complete idea of how it works. If you don’t have a Palm Pre/Pixi, take a look at a few screenshots below to whet your appetite for this amazing new feature.

YouVersion Live

Also included in this release for Palm Pre/Pixi is the addition of YouVersion Live. Now you can interact with church services and other live events right on your Palm WebOS device. This addition means that YouVersion Live is now available on four major mobile platforms including iPhone, Blackberry, and Android.

We hope you enjoy this update to the Palm Pre/Pixi. If there’s something missing or if you think we could improve something, please let us know at http://youversion.com/support.

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Introducing YouVersion in Norwegian

Today is an important day for YouVersion. It’s the day that YouVersion begins a long-awaited initiative to help people around the world engage the Bible, no matter what language they speak. We’re incredibly excited to tell you that YouVersion.com has been translated into the Norwegian language. It’s the first of many steps that will make it possible for millions of people to read the Bible in their native language and in community with others.

To visit YouVersion in Norwegian, just go to http://no.youversion.com. Or, if you’re already on the site and want to switch to a different language, you can click the button that says “English” in the footer of any page on the YouVersion website to see a list of language options. (Right now it’s English and Norwegian with Spanish coming soon.)

Thanks to the generous folks at Norea Mediamisjon, the entire website has been translated by native Norwegian speakers and not by translation software. Human translation means it should be much more accurate and feel more natural. We’re committed to making further refinements as necessary to make sure the site is fully localized (geek-speak for translating a website) and ready for someone who only speaks Norwegian to enjoy.

We have big plans for YouVersion as it moves into the international community and more people around the world will be able to engage the Bible in their own languages. And, as usual, with big plans come big announcements, so stay tuned for more big news in the coming days and weeks!

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Two Billion

That’s how many minutes you and millions of others in the YouVersion community have spent engaging the Bible on mobile devices! Two BILLION minutes!

Two billion minutes reading the Bible is a huge milestone for the YouVersion community. Since it’s tough to visualize such a huge number, let’s break it down. Two billion minutes equals:

  • 3,800 years (Abraham was alive 3,800 years ago.)
  • 1,388,889 days (You could fly around the world 785,714 times.)
  • 33,000,000 hours (You could fly to the moon 458,333 times.)

While 2 billion minutes is a huge milestone by itself, an even more amazing feat is that you reached 2 billion minutes in a fraction of the time it took you to reach 1 billion minutes. That means Scripture engagement on mobile devices is taking off like a rocket!

More time engaging the Bible— it’s why YouVersion exists, and you continue to break new ground and set new records doing just that. Way to go! Celebrate with us at http://youversion.com/billions or leave a comment below to let us know what you think of people reading the Bible for 2 billion minutes on mobile devices.

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New for iPhone/iPad: Facebook Sharing & Universal App

The latest version of the YouVersion iPhone & iPad app is available now in the iTunes App Store. This update (2.3.1), along with the previous update (2.3), brings several niceties and one big feature update to Apple’s mobile platform. Here’s the breakdown by version.

2.3
With the 2.3 update, we joined our popular iPhone Bible app with our iPad app to create a single application that runs on both devices. This means you’ll only need to stay up-to-date with one app for your favorite Bible application on both iPhone and iPad. We also moved the “sign-in” to the Settings menu to prepare the way for the biggest update coming in 2.3.1.

2.3.1
We went one step further with 2.3.1 and completely changed how the app handles sharing to Twitter, plus we added the ability to share to Facebook. With the new sharing structure, you can share seamlessly to Twitter and Facebook at the same time through YouVersion Connections (which was also added recently to the YouVersion website, as well as the Palm Pre/Pixi and Blackberry apps). Once you’ve connected your YouVersion account, sharing the Bible with your friends on Twitter & Facebook will be easier than ever.

We have big plans for the iPhone & iPad (iOS) platform in the coming months, but we wanted to get these updates out to you as soon as possible. Let us know what you think by rating the app in the App Store and leaving a comment. Don’t forget that issues can be reported on our support site at http://youversion.com/support.

Connect with us on Facebook at http://facebook.com/youversion or Twitter at http://twitter.com/youversion.