Fast-Food Cities

In 2006, 59% of fast-food users in Greenville, N.C., patronized a quick-service restaurant 12 or more times a month (nearly three times a week), making it the No. 1 market for frequent fast-food users in the U.S. Portland, Maine, ranked last, with only a 27% incidence of heavy QSR users.

Notably, three of the Top 10 markets are in the Carolinas and three are in Texas. The remaining leaders are located in the southeast United States and Oklahoma. Indeed, none are north of the Mason-Dixon line.

The average of all 61 markets studied was 42%. Here are the cities that ranked above 42%:

City	%
Greenville NC	59
McAllen TX	58
Memphis TN	55
Oklahoma City OK	55
Charleston/ Huntington WV	55
Greensboro NC	54
Columbia SC	54
Birmingham AL	52
El Paso TX	52
San Antonio TX	52
Dallas TX	51
Charlotte NC	50
Knoxville TN	50
Louisville KY	49
Lexington KY	49
Houston TX	49
Indianapolis IN	49
Raleigh/Durham NC	49
Nashville TN	48
Atlanta	48
Columbus OH	48
Waco TX	47
Baton Rouge LA	47
Greenville/ Spartanburg SC	47
Kansas City MO	47
Los Angeles	46
New Orleans	46
St. Louis MO	46
Fresno/Visalia CA	45
Austin TX	45
Savannah GA	44
Jacksonville FL	44
Las Vegas	44
Chicago	44
Phoenix	43

Source: Sandelman & Associates' Quick-Track

Turn Customers Into Guests Says Hotelier Tisch

Jonathan Tisch, chairman and CEO of Loews Hotels, says the most basic lesson he learned is applicable to all marketers in the business of attracting and keeping customers: Turn customers into guests. Tisch recently published "Chocolates on the Pillow Aren't Enough" with co-writer Karl Weber.

The book salutes Urban Outfitters for harnessing "the power of welcome to attract customers." The retailer, for example, doesn't limit its offerings to clothes. The managers start with what interests their customers and assembles a collection of items that will appeal, such as furniture, jewelry, housewares and music.

To keep people interested, the look of a store is constantly tweaked with daily shipments of new merchandise and twice-monthly store redesigns. Other organizations might want to consider fresh Web site content every week, a regularly updated newsletter or even a redesign of their logo. Tisch and Weber also offer short profiles of Commerce Bank, In-N-Out Burger; and Duke University Medical Center.

 

USA Today - Read the whole story...

Facebook goes under the knife

Social-networking sites gets a face-lift, unveiling new features after soliciting feedback from tens of thousands of its users.

Story Copyright © 2007 Reuters Limited. All rights reserved.
Published: April 11, 2007, 6:10 AM PDT

Facebook, which has seen explosive growth relative to rival social networking sites since a membership crisis six months ago, is set to unveil new features on Wednesday that mark its progress from a dating site for college kids into a mainstream network tool.

The Palo Alto-based site founded three years ago by then Harvard undergraduate Mark Zuckerberg, 22, has been quietly introducing new features by soliciting feedback from tens of thousands of users, seeking to avoid abrupt product releases.

Facebook, the No. 2 U.S. social network after News Corp.'s MySpace.com, met with a sudden privacy backlash from its users last September after introducing a design that revealed more personal information about people than many wanted known.

But after a rapid response to online protests that involved hundreds of thousands of its members, Facebook subsequently saw its growth explode to 18 million active users from around 7.5 million active users before the membership crisis.

On Wednesday, Facebook is introducing new features designed to simplify how people navigate through individual member profiles to keep tabs on friends and associates. It will offer so-called portal pages that give people a bird's eye view of groups they belong to and of possible groups they might join.

"You can only see the networks you are in and the networks you would be able to join," Zuckerberg, Facebook's chief executive, said in a phone interview.

Facebook counts more than 19 million registered users across 47,000 regional, work-related, college or high-school networks. The site's popularity is tied to the control users have over what other members see, which discourages members from cloaking their identify in the anonymity of many sites, so much so that many members post their mobile phone numbers.

Seeking to avert any new surprises for its members, Facebook has invited more than 100,000 users to comment on the site's redesigned features over the past several weeks.

The feedback led Facebook to make changes to the final product, including giving people the ability to control whether an event or group is publicized on the community portal pages that connect together member profiles in any Facebook sub-network.

"A lot of the changes are very subtle. We make small changes instead of huge things," Zuckerberg said.

Office workers and other older users have been allowed to join Facebook networks , not just college or high school students tied to particular schools or universities. More than 50 percent of people are outside of college, Zuckerberg said of the change.

Data from traffic measurement firm ComScore Networks confirms that Facebook's growth has surged since its stumble in September. Visitors to Facebook have jumped 75 percent since then to 24.8 million worldwide in February. Off a far larger base, MySpace grew 26 percent to 98.5 million visitors in the same period.

Fwd: Your Dotherightthing Company Rankings

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: dotherightthing announcements
Date: Apr 10, 2007 7:20 AM
Subject: Your Dotherightthing Company Rankings

More customized updates are on their way... until then, we wanted to share your rankings of ten more companies, based on your stories and impact ratings.

Rankings, as of April 10th, 2007 12 AM PST

1. Dunkin' Brands, Inc. 133
2. Whole Foods Market 122 
3. Apple 105 
4. Google 101 
5. Starbucks 95 
6. Microsoft 88 
7. Wal-Mart 85 
8. Exxon Mobil 68 
9. Yahoo 54 
10. Disney 51 
11. Young's seafood 42 
12. GoDaddy 37 
13. Sony 32

(Note: only 13 companies have completed evaluations)

Not what you expected? Rankings are based on the stories and ratings you submitted to the site. If a company's social performance rating appears off, you can influence its rating by sharing additional information about the impacts of the company and rating existing stories that you find important.

Click here to read about how the rankings work

Companies with 15 days remaining until Dotherightthing Performance scores are revealed: 

Ford Motor Company
News Corporation
General Motors
Virgin Group
Tesco
IKEA
Royal Dutch Shell
Best Buy
Virgin Group
Ford Motor Company
Kimberly-Clark

This important announcement was sent to all dotherightthing.com members, as part of our commitment to keeping you informed on major changes to the site (soon these will be much more customizable).

Google Blogs Alert for: Raw Energy

Willingness to lead versus unwillingness to be led
By Jack Krupansky(Jack Krupansky)
Alas, escaping from being led is not a great substitute for actually leading and I grossly underestimated the motivation, passion, discipline, and raw energy needed to actually lead rather than to simply avoid being led. ...
Entrepreneurial Engineering - http://entengr.blogspot.com/index.html

uniqueepitome .blogspot .com

As mentioned last year ( I'm really not ready to say that yet ), I'll be listing some of the great blogs that I've come to read through MyBlogLog. First time around, I only mentioned one blog. Mainly because Brian greeted me with open parenthesis and a link when I joined MyBlogLog. Since then, we've done two link exchanges and I've been steadily receiving about 10-15 hits per week from his blog alone. That's pretty impressive for this heavy turd of a blog. But then, it's a link with the word breasts in it, so I'm not sure how impressed I am with the pervs tainting my sphere of influence as MyBlogLog says. Anyhow, this time around your getting five blogs. Deal with it, enjoy it, I do.

1. Designers Who Blog. Authored by Catherine Cat Morley. I have a feeling this is one busy lady. Check out the blog, it's full of great design blogs from designers from every discipline. And it's updated almost daily. Soon she'll have her own social network of designers. Crazy man.
But a great read.

Linked to that is the infamous ( famous? ) NO SPEC blog. That's right, they don't speculate. Just kidding. The site is devoted to the accurate and demonstrable position of designers who refuse to do spec work.

For the most part I agree. It's guess work. It cheats clients of an effective and original design, while cheating the designers themselves of their own talents. It reduces the market value of design and it's integrity as a legitmate professional practice.

2. Adverteasment. Online television news. "When the Internet becomes TV, and the TV becomes the Internet, you will have here a compendium of what led up to that moment."
Authored by Andrew. He's male and addicted to stuff. No seriously, it says so in his profile. I think he's trying to figure out the difference between psychosis and paranoia, and how marketing can induce them. OK, I'm just kidding. "Cognitive Dissonance" & "Didactic Marketing," is what it says in his profile. Check it out. I know the answers he's looking for too, I'm not tell'in 'em tho.

3. Brett Petersel."Internet Rants & Raves." I like to drop by just for the random dish of topics. The site is very nicely designed as well. It's clean. 8)
I'm jealous too.
4. Five Blogs Before Lunch, Authored by Dave Ibsen. "The weblog companion of 5 meetings Before Lunch marketing consultancy." Now, I'm not sure what kind of readership they have outside of Mybloglog but, I really dig this blog. It always has fresh content and–well it's closely related to my professional interests. I usually find something no one else is writing. Which for me, is the best thing about blogging.

5. Finally-A Bowl of Stupid Yeah. I know, it's a fun name. Appropriate for some of us too. That's what drew me there in the first place–wait, what I meant was–ah never mind. This is a great blog. I stop by daily for my helping. It's Authored by Matthew, he's male and lives in Florida. That's all I know. I laugh out loud sometimes too.

There it is. Five more blogs from–yet another social networking blog. Which ironically, by defenition every blog is a social network. As long as your writing for something greater than yourself, it's a social network.

Zagat to write hotel reviews for priceline.com

March 21, 2007

Zagat will create exclusive online hotel reviews for priceline.com customers to access for free. Zagat Survey information will be available on priceline.com for hotels, restaurants and attractions in the United States and select international locations.

Priceline.com (Nasdaq: PCLN) today announced an agreement with Zagat Survey, LLC, under which Zagat will create exclusive online hotel reviews for priceline.com customers to access for free.

Zagat Survey information will be available for hotels, restaurants and attractions in the United States and select international locations. The Zagat information, combined with traveler reviews provided by priceline.com customers, covers over 600 cities and thousands of hotels, restaurants and attractions.

"Zagat is the world's leading provider of reliable and trusted survey-based travel information and Priceline.com is pleased to be the only travel reservation site to feature free Zagat ratings and reviews," said Brett Keller, priceline.com's Chief Marketing Officer. "We believe that Zagat's survey-based hotel reviews, combined with priceline.com's proprietary hotel star rating system and our growing database of reviews written by priceline.com customers who also have stayed at these properties, make priceline.com a premier destination for shopping and comparing top-brand hotels and prices."

Mr. Keller added, "We are also pleased to include Zagat Survey's reviews in the new Priceline Destination Guides. In addition to Zagat, these guides to popular cities around the world include travel reviews from priceline.com customers. With this rich blending of information and opinions, you can plan an exciting trip that includes the best restaurants, sights and attractions that a city has to offer."

Under the exclusive online content agreement announced today, Zagat will provide priceline.com with:

Zagat Survey's independent hotel reviews that include numerical ratings for a hotel's rooms, service, dining and facilities, along with a commentary on the property. Zagat ratings already appear for many hotels, and that number is expected to grow in the future. The Zagat hotel reviews are offered in addition to the information provided by priceline.com's proprietary hotel star rating system, hotel photographs, maps and descriptions, and the hotel traveler reviews provided by priceline.com customers who have stayed at the properties. Zagat reviews are incorporated throughout priceline.com's hotel shopping service.

The Priceline Destination Guides, Powered By Zagat Survey. This handy online travel guide features a useful combination of commentary and reviews supplied by Zagat and priceline.com's own customers. They'll tell you what not to miss, and what to pass up. The guide dishes on an area's top eateries – all the way from unpretentious corner bistros and pizzerias to ultra-trendy restaurants. Want some place to work off your meal? The Priceline Guide reviews various types of attractions, including museums, nightclubs, sports venues, sightseeing spots, historical landmarks and more.

Coming Soon – Printable Zagat Travel Capsules. Once available, these city-specific guides will be electronically delivered free of charge to priceline.com customers who have booked trips to top travel destinations. The printable Travel Capsules will feature Zagat ratings and reviews for restaurants, hotels, nightlife, attractions and shopping.