NEWS MEDIA CENTER

31,338 Students Seize the Net!

February 2001

Celebrating Valentine's Day by promising to save sex until marriage, 31,338 teenagers and college students from around the world logged on to www.truelovewaits.com to sign and mail their True Love Waits pledge. To accommodate changes in the international time zones, the Web site began receiving and tabulating the sexual abstinence commitments on Feb. 13 and continued until the early morning hours of Feb. 15.

On Feb. 15, students returned to www.truelovewaits.com to print a certificate with the 31,338 number as well as their individual names.

As many as 900 youth groups and individuals were logged onto www.truelovewaits.com at the same time during Valentine's evening, more than double the amount of traffic to all the LifeWay Christian Resource sites during their busiest times.

Organizers began planning for the large Internet-driven True Love Waits Seize the Net early in 1999. They realized a large number of hits would occur during peak times when community-wide rallies and church youth groups would meet to sign and mail their True Love Waits pledges. During this planning process, internal controls were established that enabled the organization to ensure every commitment that was signed and mailed on www.truelovewaits.com was received and counted even though the live counter did not always show the correct tally.

At some of the high-volume times when rallies were being held around the country and a large number of students were logged on to the website, the live counter reverted to 0 and began a new count. LifeWay Christian Resource technical support personnel monitored the site throughout the evening and corrected problems as quickly as possible. The controls in place gave an accurate count even though the Web site did not always reflect this number.

Looking ahead to next year, True Love Waits Seize the Net Goes Live will feature a national linkup that will include exciting images from scores of rallies occurring the evening of Feb. 13, 2002. More details will be announced later.