Getting your head around Facebook….

11/26/2012 By 1 Comment

Did you know…..?

• In October 2012, the countries with the most Facebook users were:
United States with 166.1 million members
Brazil with 58.4 million members
India with 55.3 million members

• According to a May 2011 Consumer Reports survey, there are 7.5 million children under 13 with accounts and 5 million under 10, violating the site’s terms of service. A Facebook executive has said that ‘Facebook removes 20,000 people a day who are underage.’

•  Critics of Facebook, such as Facebook Detox, state that Facebook has turned into a national obsession in the United States, resulting in vast amounts of time lost and encouraging narcissism.

• According to a leading counter terrorism expert, terrorists are using Facebook for hiring loners from western nations like Australia.

• In 2008, Collins English Dictionary declared “Facebook” as its new Word of the Year; in December 2009, the New Oxford American Dictionary declared its word of the year to be the verb “unfriend”, defined as “To remove someone as a ‘friend’ on a social networking site such as Facebook”.

• On November 7, 2012, the photo of US President Barack Obama hugging his wife after winning the 2012 election had over 3.2 million ‘likes’, a record so far.

With thanks to Wikipedia for that useful contribution to your next game of Trivial Pursuit. (And yes, I have also paid my £5…..)

Anyhow…..  That was only by way of saying that although it has been a bit of a struggle I think we are finally coming to terms with our six Facebook pages – well, seven if you count my own which I started in the hope that it might help me understand the others!!

I knew that having presence on Facebook for more than just FoodsMatter would definitely be a ‘good thing’.  But I had spent the last 18 months happily Tweeting while our lovely American intern, Amy, set up and developed the FoodsMatter Facebook page so I was not at all sure about  spreading outside my 140 characters – let alone adding pictures….

So, a few months ago we all took a deep breath, I invited Alex Gazzola (aka @HealthJourno) to take over  our seven Twitter accounts – listed below – no doubt many of you chat with him on a regular basis! – and I set up  our new Facebook pages. (Making the covers was great fun!)

The number of those ‘liking’ us is now growing steadily (but if any of you would like to ‘Like’ any of the pages below please feel free to do so….) and Alex has just logged us in to the ‘Usernames’ feature which allows us to use nice simple URLs instead of the  140 digit long ones with which I had been labouring!

So please join us at:

FoodsMatter at www.facebook.com/FoodsMatter and www.twitter.com/foodsmatter

CoeliacsMatter at www.facebook.com/CoeliacsMatter and www.twitter.com/coeliacsmatter

FreeFromFoodsMatter at www.facebook.com/FreeFromFood and www.twitter.com/FreeFromFood

FreeFrom Food Awards at www.facebook.com/FreeFromFoodAwards and www.twitter.com/fffoodawards

FreeFrom RecipesMatter at www.facebook.com/FreeFromRecipes and www.twitter.com/FreeFromRecipes

SkinsMatter at www.facebook.com/SkinsMatter and www.twitter.com/skinsmatter

FreeFrom Skincare Awards at www.twitter.com/FFSkincareAward

MBJ at http://www.facebook.com/michelleberriedale-johnson

 

 

Filed Under: Blogging/social media, Dairy-free, FreeFrom Food, FreeFrom Skincare, Gluten, Gluten-free, Nuts Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , ,

How honest do you want/expect a review to be?

08/09/2012 By 6 Comments

@HealthJourno (aka Alex G.) ran another excellent live coeliac Twitter chat last week, a  lot of which focused on what bloggers wrote about freefrom products that they were sent to review. (Click here if you want the full transcript.)

Some felt embarrassed about posting negative reviews if they had received free products or worried that it might have a damaging effect on that supplier’s business, while some said that they had given up reading blog reviews as they were always glowing. Stevan from the Foodamentalists even worried that because he always got good reviews from bloggers, readers would think that he had paid for them.

All this chat made me think about just how we approach our reviews for the FreefromFoodsMatter site – and I came up with the following (which I also posted on Alex’s site):

I know that we come from a slightly different angle (as a website whose purpose in life is to review and write about freefrom foods) but we very firmly believe that reviews must, if they are to be worth doing, be honest.

That does NOT mean that they have to be abusive (‘that was the most gross and disgusting cake I have ever eaten’) but that if a cake, for example, is too dry/sweet/overcooked/solid you do need to say so.

However, we see it as our role as to encourage manufacturers to do better so we also always praise when we can and phrase any critical comments in as positive and constructive a way as possible. (‘This cake has lots of potential – and really good that it is egg free as well as gluten free – but we felt that it needed a little more work on the texture as, although the flavours were interesting, it really was a touch on the solid side.’)

We do accept – indeed ask for – free samples. In an ideal world we probably would go out and buy them but, realistically, doing so would seriously stretch our resources both in terms of time and costs and, as a result, far fewer products would get reviewed. But we absolutely do not believe that the fact that we have not paid for it should in any way restrict our comments – and hope that anyone who sends us a product to review understands that. If they are not happy with our comments they are free not to send us any products in the future – and some companies have chosen not to do so in which case, if we think it is important that they are reviewed, we go out and buy them.

However, for what it is worth, we have found that manufacturers’ responses to constructive criticism have been almost entirely positive with many taking on board our comments and coming up with what we all (including them) felt was a better product.

Interestingly, when I went back to Alex’s blog just now there was another comment from a blogger whose daytime job is selling high end fashion accessories. She is Polish and made two very relevant points.

Culturally, Poles tend to be very straightforward and say it as they find it (‘no bushes are beaten’ as she picturesquely phrased it) whereas Brits tend to be more reserved in expressing criticism. (Yes, how often do we actually complain when we should?…..)

Secondly, ‘if no one tells her that there is an issue that needs fixing’, how is she to know to fix it? However, there is a way to do these things and while she will bend over backwards for someone who tells her nicely about a problem, she will feel much less inclined to do so if they are gratuitously rude. And so say all of us……

Filed Under: Blogging/social media, Food, FreeFrom Food, Gluten-free Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , ,

@HealthJourno joins @FoodsMatter team!

07/27/2012 By 2 Comments

We are delighted to announce that @HealthJourno, better known to many of you as Alex Gazzola, coeliac commentator, blogger, paid-up Italian-Welsh foodie, cake-lover, FreeFrom Food Awards judge and ‘voyeur’ of the annual FreeFrom Food Awards ‘bash’, deputy editor of SkinsMatter and fellow founder/organiser of the FreeFromSkinCare Awards……….. has joined our newly-formed social networking team!

As those of you who tweet and Facebook will know, last year our lovely American intern, Amy, took us firmly in hand and got us thoroughly on track but, sadly (and shortsightedly?), the provision which allowed foreign students two year’s worth of working visa once they have finished their degree has now been with drawn and Amy has been dispatched back to Chicago leaving us to fend for ourselves!

However, she instructed us well and we have now got the bit so firmly between our teeth that we are dramatically expanding our social media activity to include dedicated Facebook and Twitter accounts covering not only FoodsMatter, CoeliacsMatter, SkinsMatter and our two industry FreeFrom Awards (for foods and skins) but FreeFrom Foods and FreeFrom Recipes.

So please welcome (and please ‘like’, ‘follow’, ‘share’, ‘tweet’ and post about…) @FreeFromFood and  FreeFrom Food and @FreeFromRecipes and  FreeFrom Recipes.

The two FreeFrom Food accounts will focus on all that goes on on the FreeFromFoodsMatter site –  all our new product reviews and our huge freefrom manufacturer directories, currently underoing going a major revamp and due to go live in mid of August. Plus, of course, useful articles and research reports related to freefrom food – and any exciting news, events or special offers in the freefrom world.


The two FreeFrom Recipes accounts will focus on our FreeFromRecipesMatter site which is also undergoing an ‘upgrade’! It already contains over 600 ‘freefrom’ recipes covering dairy and lactose-free, gluten and wheat-free, soya-free, egg-free, nut-free, corn-free, nightshade-free, yeast-free………  main courses, starters, salads, vegetarian dishes, desserts and cakes, breads and biscuits. The vast majority of these come from the FoodsMatter archives and have been dreamt up, tested and tasted by yours truly. But there are now so many excellent freefrom cooks around that it seems a shame not to make use of their expertise and offer you a far wider selection of dishes.

So, although I will certainly not stop cooking, or inventing recipes, from now on my recipes will be heavily interspersed  with those from guest chefs, cooks and cookery writers all of whom have now, for personal or professional reasons, made a study of freefrom cooking. Kicking off , this weekend with recipes from the lovely Caleigh – known to many of you as The Gluten Freek. Caleigh is one of, thankfully, only 600 people in the UK who are unfortunate enough to suffer not only from Crohn’s disease but also from coeliac disease  – but she still manages to lead an amazingly full life – she was a judge at this year’s FreeFrom Food Awards among many other things. You can read her own account of how she copes with both conditions here and here is a sneak preview of her recipes…

But meanwhile….. back to Alex! Because Alex is already an active Tweeter and blogger and and is just about to start up his own Facebook page – and because he knows the FoodsMatter sites and all that we do so well, he seemed the ideal person to recruit to help us manage all of these new outlets.

So as from August 1st, Alex and Cressida and I will all be tweeting and Facebooking on all of these accounts – although I think Alex will be in charge with Cressida and I just filling in the gaps! However, a  freefrom hamper to the closest guess on who tweeted/posted what!!

But whichever way round, do please join us. We have a huge amount of information about every aspect of freefrom food (and of course, on our FoodsMatter and CoeliacsMatter sites, on all the allergy, intolerance and sensitivity problems that would cause you to need to eat freefrom) and even if we cannot always sort out every freefrom problem ourselves, we are pretty sure that we will always know someone who can!

Filed Under: Allergies, Blogging/social media, Dairy-free, Eczema, Food, FreeFrom Food, FreeFrom Skincare, Gluten-free, Nutrition, Recipes Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,