Baptist Press (@baptistpress) reports on the surge among Christians to use mobile applications in accessing the Bible, especially in a mobile context.

There are Christian apps on every smartphone platform, but among the two most popular platforms -- Android and iPhone's iOS -- there are literally hundreds of Bible and Christian-themed apps, helping believers with everything from Scripture memorization to lesson preparation to Bible study to witnessing....

The most popular Christian app, by far, is the YouVersion Bible app (@YouVersion), developed by the multiple-site-campus church known as LifeChurch.tv.

Read this article in full. Also see “Christian Apps of the Month.”

Ministries and churches are creating their own apps to further their messages. For example, see the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association (@BGEA) mobile site and its “Steps2Peace” app.

Let Somersault create a strategic app for your brand. Be sure to use daily our SomersaultNOW dashboard to remain current with the latest developments in social media marketing and digital publishing. And as long as we’re talking about mobility, be sure to regularly use Somersault’s mobile site for links to other mobile-friendly sites.

Jack Hird (@Jake_Hird), senior research analyst for Econsultancy, offers the following social media stats:

• Twitter has 175 million registered users; 95 million tweets per day; 4 million tweets per hour.
• LinkedIn registrants number more than 100 million
• Facebook population officially is more than a half-billion, but some unofficial counting has it at 640 million. At least 250 million users log in every 24 hours; 200 million access it through mobile devices. The average Facebook user creates 90 pieces of content each month.
• Flickr hosts more than 5 billion images; 3,000 images uploaded every minute.
• Wikipedia now has more than 17 million articles and 91,000 active contributors.
• YouTube video views number more than two billion every 24 hours; more than 24 hours of video are uploaded every minute.

Read this article in full.

Graham Charlton (@gcharlton) has assembled statistics about the mobile Internet:

• People use mobile search at home in the evening (81%) than any other time or places more frequently than anywhere else (81%), followed by at home on weekends (80%).
• 66% use mobile search while while watching TV, something which should get advertisers thinking, while 61% said they use it at work.
• 75% said mobile search makes their lives easier, 63% said access to mobile search has changed the way they gather information, and 32% said they use mobile search more than search engines on their computers.
• 84% use mobile search to look for information on local retailers, such as opening hours, address and contact details. 82% look for online retailers, 73% find a specific product or manufacturer website.
• Tying in with the crossover in TV viewing and mobile search, 71% learn more about a product or service having seen an ad, 68% use it to find the best price for a product.

Read this article in full.

Also see Social Media Today’s “Best Social Media Stats and Market Research of 2010 (So Far)” by Tom Pick (@TomPick).

Let Somersault help you create an integrated social media marketing strategy. And be sure to use daily our SomersaultNOW dashboard to remain current with the latest developments in social media marketing and digital publishing.

“The Living Legacy of the Bible” exhibit is part of KJV400, Nelson Bible’s (@NelsonBibles) unprecedented 400 day celebration of the 400th anniversary of the publication of the King James Version of the Bible.

The exhibit allows attendees to experience first-hand more than 4,000 years of Bible history, from the time of Abraham to the present day. Artifacts in the exhibit include Dead Sea Scroll fragments, cuneiform tablets, numerous historic Bibles, an original 1611 KJV Bible, and much more.

The #1 selling Bible translation of all time, the King James Version was first published May 2, 1611. Unparalleled in its theological, literary, and cultural magnitude, the KJV continues to inspire people from all walks of life and faith traditions.

At the start of 2011, Somersault produced an interactive Infographic featuring 22 landmark anniversaries in the areas of publishing, innovation, and technology occuring this year, one of which is the 400th anniversary of the KJV Bible. Read the news release.

See more photos of "The Living Legacy of the Bible" exhibit.

See more photos of the NRB 2011 Convention.

Novelist Alton Gansky (@altongansky) is the author of more than 30 books and provides writing services to publishers, agents, businesses, and other authors. On his YouTube channel, he interviewed in 2 sessions Dave Lambert, editorial director for Somersault (@smrsault). Dave explains how Somersault came to be and how it helps content providers take full advantage of the rapidly changing publishing world. Watch the videos.

We hope you’re finding our online dashboard for publishing and marketing professionals, SomersaultNOW (http://netvibes.com/somersault), to be useful in staying current with the latest important news and information relating to your work. (Read our announcement about SomersaultNOW.)

We created the dashboard tabs to reflect Somersault's focus on book publishing, editorial oversight, innovation, leadership, branding, marketing/PR, social media, and research for the publishing community. We also included a tab to quickly read breaking religion news stories, another tab to help you monitor your brand every day, and another with links to sites for reading on your mobile device.

One of Somersault’s values is to be flexible and nimble. We’re keeping our eye to the horizon to anticipate the next change-wave coming. So we’ve added to the dashboard the new tab “Future,” where articles by futurists can be read as a way to help you prepare for future technology, future cultural norms, future reading habits, etc., that will impact your publishing strategies and sustainable growth. We hope you’ll benefit from it.

Interested in a free website that collects in one location the links and RSS article and news feeds from more than 300 media sources written for publishing, editing, and marketing professionals, and provides multiple services for monitoring a brand’s online word-of-mouth? Created by international publishing strategy and services agency Somersault Group™ (http://somersaultgroup.com) especially for publishing executives and content creators, the SomersaultNOW dashboard (http://netvibes.com/somersault) is intended to be used as an Internet start-up page, browser homepage, bookmarked favorite, or mobile portal.

You can use the dashboard as is, or customize it for your personal needs by registering a free account with Netvibes.

==> If you find this free online dashboard useful, please tell others about it on your blog, in your tweets, on your Facebook updates, by email, etc. Please include the hashtag #SomersaultNOW in your tweets. Here's a suggested tweet you may want to use: Check out the new #SomersaultNOW free Web dashboard created for #publishing & #marketing professionals http://bit.ly/fLYNYe .<==

The site contains news feeds and links divided into 9 tabbed categories: Publishing, Editing, Innovation, Leadership, Branding, Marketing/PR, Social Media/Word-of-Mouth, Research, and Religion News. Two additional tabbed sections consist of resources to assist users who want to monitor their brands’ current online and social media buzz, and selected links to publishing and marketing content designed to be read on mobile devices using Wi-Fi connections.

Among the daily RSS feeds on the SomersaultNOW dashboard are those from such media as Publishers Weekly, The New York Times bestseller lists, Shelf Awareness, American Booksellers Association, CBA bestseller lists, ECPA, The Association of American Publishers, Digital Book World, mediabistro.com, and Seth Godin’s blog. Direct links are included to websites like BookWire.com, Chicago Manual of Style Online, and Common Errors in English Usage. The dashboard even has the daily edition of the Dilbert comic strip, and words-of-the-day from Oxford English Dictionary, Dictionary.com, and Merriam-Webster Dictionary.

The dashboard’s “Monitor Your Brand” tab offers the ability to conduct real-time Twitter searches as well as back-tweet and hashtag searches, Addict-o-matic and BoardTracker searches, image and video searches, and services including MonitorThis, Social Media Fire Hose, Google Alerts, and TweetBeep.

“We created the SomersaultNOW dashboard to help users leverage the swiftly shifting landscape of today’s publishing world by staying informed about it,” says Jonathan Petersen, Somersault’s social media evangelist. “Our dashboard assembles quickly accessible collective knowledge in one convenient place.”

Somersault Group™ (Somersault™) is a partner-managed LLC with offices in downtown Grand Rapids, Michigan. The company’s purpose is to enable publishers, agents, ministry organizations, and Christian authors to quickly leverage rapid changes in communication technology, emphasize excellence in branding and marketing communication for an author’s business development, and extend the highest editorial standards to achieve the goal of helping people experience God’s kingdom. Somersault’s mission statement: to change lives by connecting inspirational content creators with readers using exceptional creativity, right-now technology, and old-fashioned personal care. For more information, visit somersaultgroup.com.

 A variety of pundits predict 2011 will be the year of the cable TV cord cutter, the year of the computer tablet, even the year of the vegetable. What were the early sparks through the centuries that ignited the fire for today’s stunning advancements?

We, Somersault Group (http://somersau.lt) - the international publishing strategy and services agency founded by five former Zondervan marketing and editorial executives - see 2011 as a year to recognize and celebrate the significant and life-changing milestones achieved over time in the areas of publishing, technology, and innovation.

To that end, we’ve created the interactive pdf Infographic (that’s even printable) that honors 22 landmark anniversaries this year, such as the King James Version of the Bible (400th), the transcontinental telegraph system in the USA (150th), MTV (30th), the first website (20th), and the iPod (10th).

Somersault Infographic 2011

The Infographic (designed by Scott Schermer, student at Kendall College of Art & Design) is located online at scribd.com/doc/46895274/Somersault-Infographic-2011. If you like it, please blog about it, tweet it, email your friends, tell others about it, and post your comments below. To receive an interactive PDF version (with links to each anniversary’s Web information) by return email attachment, send a request to hello@somersaultgroup.com.

Somersault believes the unprecedented changes occurring in the publishing world aren’t a crisis; they’re a playground of possibilities. We help publishers, agents, ministry partners, and authors adapt to these changes with dexterity.

Our services include brand counseling, editorial direction, research capabilities, marketing strategy, Internet and social media presence, and a comprehensive portfolio of publishing assistance.

Our mission is to change lives by connecting inspirational content creators with readers using exceptional creativity, right-now technology, and old-fashioned personal care.

We look forward to hearing how we can be of service to you. Be sure to follow this blog (http://somersault.posterous.com) and our Twitter stream (http://twitter.com/smrsault). And please “Like” us on Facebook (http://facebook.com/SomersaultGroup).

Happy Innovative Year!

Through our blog postings, Somersault's recognition of the wide-ranging set of changes in the publishing world is reflected, along with our particular attitude of embracing the future in response to those changes. We're creating a service firm for the publishing world that will lead the way in responding creatively and aggressively to the new parameters of publishing. We invite your interaction with us in this blog, so that we all learn from one another and move forward with confidence.

You can see what publications Somersault is following on our own alltop page at http://my.alltop.com/somersault

Somersault is featured in the weekly newsletter Rush to Press, published by Evangelical Christian Publishers Association (http://ecpa.org). Read it at http://www.ecpa.org/rush/pr41.html

Thank you David Crumm for such a warm welcome in announcing Somersault in ReadTheSpirit Weekly Planner. Read it http://bit.ly/dphPdD