By Kathleen Ramirez, Fahlgren EVP and Corporate Media Director

They say that the first step in beating an addicition is admitting you have one. 

Well…here it goes.  I am a Facebook addict.  I love to read it.  I love to write posts.  I love playing Word Challenge.   I love having real time chats with friends.  I love that none of this requires me to pick up a phone.  I came to this realization last night while I tried (unsuccessfully) to post an update, watch Big Love and give the baby a bottle simultaneously.  While the baby eventually won this tug of war taking place on the sofa, I realized that I am hooked.

I am obviously not alone in this.  In November, 2008, Facebook drew 200 million unique worldwide visitors.  To put that in perspective, 1 in 5 people who accessed the Internet that month visited the site.  While Facebook might be king of the world, MySpace is still dominating the U.S.  Whether that will continue to be the case….who really knows for sure?  Trends indicate that Facebook might surpass MySpace in the U.S. by 2010.

Read the rest of this entry »

By Ann Oliver, Account Director

What’s for dinner?

I’ve been asked this question nearly every day for the last ten years or so (prior to that, dinner was complimentery appetizers at happy hour). It’s a challenge to constantly come up with tasty, easy, and economical recipe ideas. Lucky for me I discovered AllRecipes.com about eight years ago and it’s been one of my favorite go-to sites ever since.

Before the buzz words User Generated Content, Multi-media and Online Community became ubiquitous, AllRecipes.com was organizing visitors’ favorite recipes and the community was rating and reviewing them.  Home cooks upload pictures of their delicious creations, users share ideas on how to make it better or offer compliments on the tasty results.

I was really impressed when a co-worker who knows that I am a fan of the site, mentioned a new iPhone app, Dinner Spinner, available free from the site. I do not have an iPhone or iTouch, I use the mobile version of AllRecipes when I’m remote.  But after checking out Dinner Spinner, I’m thinking I may need to make a smart-phone upgrade.  I won’t be the only one. eMarketer predicts 53% of the world’s population will have a mobile phone by 2014 - many of them will likely be smart phones capable of storing applications for everything you can imagine. Like recipes. 

Dinner Spinner, for the iPhone or iPod Touch, allows you to pick out what kind of dish you want, how much time you have and the main ingredient. What’s the “spinner” part of the Dinner Spinner app? You can randomize one of the search criteria or shake your iPhone to spin for ideas–how cool is that?

All Recipes 2008 Year End Report highlights the huge rise in home cooking. It makes sense that eating at home is a trend consistent with a down economy. Maybe a next gen feature of Dinner Spinner could be a search field for cost per serving?

Kudos to Allrecipes.com for providing on-the-go tools that help get dinner on the table and for giving me plenty of food for thought.

By Alaina Sheer,

I’m a single mother. 

Finding time to even brush my teeth is a miracle in its own right. Single parents are perhaps one of the hardest demographics to reach but a growing one. And if your brand can reach me and actually drive me to a purchase you can reach anyone. 

Just before the new year I decided to take a last minute trip to Chicago. 

I took a few minutes to search for a hotel on Hotels.com and felt instantly overwhelmed. I had no time to search through all of their options. What I needed was a hotel on or near Michigan Avenue for less than $100.00.

The days leading up to my trip quickly passed and I had yet to book a room.

Then I reported my dilemma on Twitter. 

And you’ll notice, within just a few minutes a representative from the travel website Resideo.com had replied to me with a recommendation. You’ll see up there in my dialogue that their first suggestion didn’t quite fit. I responded back with a thank you expecting them to quickly give up.

Instead they responded back after some research with a hotel that fit the bill.

I clicked through to their website and immediately booked a room. 

So how did Resideo find me?

They weren’t following my Tweets and I wasn’t following them. They are probably using a tool like TweetDeck to monitor the constant buzz of conversation on Twitter. When anyone mentions the word “hotel” or “vacation” TweetDeck alerts them and within seconds Resideo can respond.

Read the rest of this entry »