Bookmarks. You know what those are, right? It's the little ribbon that helps you save your place in your physical Bible. Most Bibles have one bookmark. Really fancy, expensive ones might have 2. When it comes to the YouVersion bookmark (and with apologies to the 1988 Oldsmobile commerical), this isn't your father's bookmark! This past June, YouVersion's blog posted this infographic stating that registered YouVersion readers had already posted over 20 million bookmarks!
This amazing stat doesn't begin to express the enormity of this bookmarking phenomenon because these 20 million bookmarks are only from the registered users, which as of this past June totaled just over a million. The number of downloaded YV apps approached 22 million at this same time (June, 2011.) This tells me the vast majority of people who download their Bible app don't register it. They aren't required to do so. Therefore, the number of bookmarks could be more than 400 million! That's about a hundred million more Bible bookmarks than the number of people who live in the U.S.!
According to the good folks at YouVersion, one person has bookmarked his or her Bible over 40 thousand times. Since there are only about 31,000 total verses in the Bible, some of these verses must be bookmarked multiple times! What is it about the YouVersion bookmark that it so addictive?
Simplicity. Functionality, Need. These 3 factors make the YV bookmark something that is used every day by thousands of users. Let's talk about each in turn, and maybe along the way help you find how YV bookmarks could be helpful to you too.
Adding a bookmark to your YouVersion mobile Bible is ridiculously simple. On my Android phone I simply long-press a verse that I'm reading that I think I might want to remember. Two things happen simultaneously, First the verse is temporarily highlighted. Second a pop-up dialog box lifts up from the bottom of my screen with 5 choices, the first of which is to bookmark. You have the option to give the bookmark a title and a label, but you don't need to do that. Just save and you're done! Easy. Simple. Brilliant!
I use an Android phone like the one above on the left. The Blackberry and iPhone work very similarly. Because the operating system is different, each one has a different way of getting to the same end result. In all 3 cases, YouVersion has kept creating bookmarks a simple and easy thing to do. If you'd like to watch how to make a bookmark in your mobile Bible, YouVersion has posted some great short YouTube videos. Check out your particular flavor of smartphone:
- Creating Notes and Bookmarks on Android
- Creating Notes and Bookmarks on Blackberry
- Creating Notes and Bookmarks on iPhone
This post has grown a tad long for our purposes, so we'll wrap it up tomorrow with a discussion of both the functionality and the need Bible users have for this bookmark function. Come back to hear a real-life example of someone new to the Bible who uses the bookmark functions all the time!
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