May 7, 2011 (Times Square, New York, NY) – Featured throughout the historical celebration and press conference, master of ceremonies Amy Ricalde co-hosts the 150th Birthday Anniversary of Rabindrath Tagore, the First Nobel Laureate of South Asia with USIN Celebrations Co-founder, Roger Sen Gupta.

Tagore was a multi-talented figure who influenced generations with his contributions to literature, music, philosophy and the arts. In 1913, he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature, the first South Asian to win such an award. Tagore’s works are widely translated into English, Dutch, German, Spanish, and Czech, and is regarded as the greatest poet in India’s history.

The celebration of Tagore’s birthday has become a tradition for New York City. On May 7, 1961, Times Square was renamed “Tagore Square” in recognition of the poet’s 100th birthday. In addition to declaring May 7 “Tagore Day” in the Borough of Manhattan, Borough President Stringer presented the first-ever key to the Borough to award-winning film actress and director Aparna Sen. Highlights of the event aired on TV Asia Community Roundup program on May 12th.

Amongst the speakers and panelists introduced by Amy Ricalde included New York Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, David Brooks, Columnist, The New York Times, Mika Brzezinski and Joe Scarborough of MSNBC’s Morning Joe and the Honorable David Walker, Former United States Comptroller General.

Oct 04, 2010 – Nationally known voiceover artists Randy Thomas and Amy Ricalde will be among the featured guests on the next edition of TV CONFIDENTIAL, which premieres the week of Oct. 4 on ShokusRadio.com, InternetVoicesRadio.com and Share-a-Vision Radio, KSAV.org.  See More.

Perhaps, Author Daniel Goleman in “Social Intelligence” has captured this experience:

“We are wired to connect.” Each encounter between people engages their emotions and in turn, steer our emotional economy. Given our socially reactive brains, we must “be wise,” he says, “and be aware of the ways that our moods influence the each life we touch.”

Specifically, in the discussion of Mood Drivers, Daniel Goleman remembers while visiting other regions of the country:
“…being pleasantly surprised by the friendly tones of the taped voice on the telephone that informed, ‘Your call could not be completed as dialed’… gave a small trill of good feeling – due largely to my years of irritating phone company’s computerized voice back home.”

Goleman further explains that the decision to use a less friendly voice in other instances felt like an immediate punishment for misdialing and would ultimately put him in a bad mood.

References: Daniel Goleman, “Social Intelligence”, Bantam Dell, 2006

January 31, 2010 – Amy Ricalde, specialized in making businesses sound better through recorded messages, was chosen to provide the voice to the phone answering system at the the NJ Foundation for the Blind (NJFFB).  See More.

1. By 2010 Gen Y will outnumber Baby Boomers….96% of them have joined a social network
2. Social Media has overtaken porn as the #1 activity on the Web
3. 1 out of 8 couples married in the U.S. last year met via social media
4. Years to Reach 50 millions Users:  Radio (38 Years), TV (13 Years), Internet (4 Years), iPod (3 Years)…Facebook added 100 million users in less than 9 months…iPhone applications hit 1 billion in 9 months.
5. If Facebook were a country it would be the world’s 4th largest between the United States and Indonesia
6. Yet, some sources say China’s QZone is larger with over 300 million using their services (Facebook’s ban in China plays into this)
7. comScore indicates that Russia has the most engage social media audience with visitors spending 6.6 hours and viewing 1,307 pages per visitor per month – Vkontakte.ru is the #1 social network
8. 2009 US Department of Education study revealed that on average, online students out performed those receiving face-to-face instruction
9. 1 in 6 higher education students are enrolled in online curriculum
10. % of companies using LinkedIn as a primary tool to find employees….80%
11. The fastest growing segment on Facebook is 55-65 year-old females
12. Ashton Kutcher and Ellen Degeneres have more Twitter followers than the entire populations of Ireland, Norway and Panama
13. 80% of Twitter usage is on mobile devices…people update anywhere, anytime…imagine what that means for bad customer experiences?
14. Generation Y and Z consider e-mail passé…In 2009 Boston College stopped distributing e-mail addresses to incoming freshmen
15. What happens in Vegas stays on YouTube, Flickr, Twitter, Facebook…
16. The #2 largest search engine in the world is YouTube
17. Wikipedia has over 13 million articles…some studies show it’s more accurate than Encyclopedia Britannica…78% of these articles are non-English
18. There are over 200,000,000 Blogs
19. 54% = Number of bloggers who post content or tweet daily
20. Because of the speed in which social media enables communication, word of mouth now becomes world of mouth
21. If you were paid a $1 for every time an article was posted on Wikipedia you would earn $156.23 per hour
22. Facebook USERS translated the site from English to Spanish via a Wiki in less than 4 weeks and cost Facebook $0
23. 25% of search results for the World’s Top 20 largest brands are links to user-generated content
24. 34% of bloggers post opinions about products & brands
25. People care more about how their social graph ranks products and services  than how Google ranks them
26. 78% of consumers trust peer recommendations
27. Only 14% trust advertisements
28. Only 18% of traditional TV campaigns generate a positive ROI
29. 90% of people that can TiVo ads do
30. Hulu has grown from 63 million total streams in April 2008 to 373 million in April 2009
31. 25% of Americans in the past month said they watched a short video…on their phone
32. According to Jeff Bezos 35% of book sales on Amazon are for the Kindle when available
33. 24 of the 25 largest newspapers are experiencing record declines in circulation because we no longer search for the news, the news finds us.
34. In the near future we will no longer search for  products and services they will find us via social media
35. More than 1.5 million pieces of content (web links, news stories, blog posts, notes, photos, etc.) are shared on Facebook…daily.
36. Successful companies in social media act more like Dale Carnegie and less like David Ogilvy Listening first, selling second
37. Successful companies in social media act more like party planners, aggregators, and content providers than traditional advertiser

The above statistics and “Social Media Revolution” video tell the story, social media isn’t a fad, it’s a fundamental shift in the way we communicate.  Please feel free to share with any non-believers!