Missouri Baptists no longer have to watch their mailbox or check web for news, features and opinion about Kingdom work in the state; with a new iPhone app, The Pathway is now in their pocket.
“There are very few Christian news apps in the App store right now,” said Kenny McCune, The Pathway’s webmaster and developer of the app. “We have a real chance to take control of that market.”
The app offers everything the newsjournal’s website offers, just optimized for the iPhone with easy sharing features and the capability to receive notifications. Like the print edition and mbcpathway.com, the app is free thanks to continued giving through the Cooperative Program.
iPhone users can click here or search for “The Pathway” in the Apple App Store. The icon is a P logo taken from the masthead at the top of The Pathway’s front page.
The app is the latest step in bringing The Pathway to the masses. Over the past year, www.mbcpathway.com has racked up 62,000 page views and that’s on top of the 22,000+ subscribers to each issue of the print edition. Last year, approximately 78 percent of The Pathway’s website views were on a computer, and only 14 percent on a mobile device and 8 percent on a tablet. So far in 2014, the computer views have dropped to 67 percent while mobile phones jumped to 20 percent, mobile devices and tablets to 12 percent.
“We are shifting very quickly,” McCune said. “To see that big a shift in that short a time means we will need to be conscious about being on smartphones and tablets.”
The rollout of the app also piggy backs on an increased effort to spread content from The Pathway on Facebook and Twitter.
The app works on iPads, and there is an Android app in the plans.