The following is part of our "Your Stories" series on different ways Facebook is used across the world. If you have a story you'd like to share with us, please submit it here . David Slade's fiancée Kelly was the first to find the lost little dog. Standing in the driveway on her way to shop for wedding dresses in January, Kelly was surprised when the disoriented animal cheerfully ran up to her. Kelly brought the pup, which she nicknamed "Mouse,

The following is part of our series, Facebook Tips , which answers some of the most commonly asked questions about using Facebook. While we hope the tips we share will be informative, we are unable to answer individual questions on this blog. Visit the Help Center for additional information about any topics we cover. Making connections on Facebook is not limited to friends. Through both Facebook Pages and Facebook Groups,

Last summer, Google announced that it would be acquiring video compression technology developer On2 Technologies . A couple weeks ago, Google announced that the acquisition had closed. Upon the completion of this acquisition, the nonprofit Free Software Foundation, whose mission is to "promote computer user freedom" and "defend the rights of all free software users," wrote an open letter to Google ,

As Twitter has risen to prominence, many loud voices have declared it the future of media, the future of journalism, even the future of the free world. I am a fan of Twitter. It is a powerful service that is unbelievably flexible and versatile. But, as I contemplate Twitter, it strikes me that Blogging remains the king of new media. Given the nature of Twitter, Tweets are necessarily abbreviated and ephemeral. I don't necessarily mean that as a criticism.

Online retail in both the U.S. and Western Europe is set for a strong period of double-digit growth over the next five years, according to new forecasts by Forrester Research. U.S. online retail will grow at a 10 percent compound annual growth rate (CAGR) over the next five years to reach nearly $249 billion by 2014. Online retail within the largest European Union nations in Western Europe will grow at an 11 percent CAGR over the same period, hitting 114 billion by 2014.

You'll often notice than when a new web service or marketing strategy gets starts getting some buzz, it will often be referred to as a "_ killer", when in most cases this turns out to be greatly exaggerated or just plain wrong. For marketers, it's important not to get too caught up in this kind of mentality, because as long as you have an audience and they can still be reached through some channel, that channel is alive and well.

As fans of "The Office" may know, it's fairly common for the entertainment industry to take a successful concept and adapt it for use overseas. And now, Microsoft's performing a similar conversion, launching a "Bing and decide" advertising campaign in the U.K. It's a good bet that you've seen a couple of these amusing TV spots by now; they feature one person trying to talk to another, but the second individual, suffering from "search overload,

Studying the front page of Digg or Reddit can give you some pretty decent insight into what kinds of content is worthy of the communities votes.  However, it's nothing compared to what you can learn by reading and being an active member of the "social" part of social media: the comments.  If you're looking for insights into the "algorithms" of your favorite social news & bookmarking sites, this is your pay dirt.

Bas van den Beld is a leading expert on European search and a regular contributor to search marketing publications and conferences all over the world. He also runs State of Search - a new website providing insight and analysis on the latest issues and developments in global search marketing. At the International Search Summit on 13th May, Bas will be speaking on mobile in Europe - a topic which is becoming much more relevant as mobile usage grows across the world. Here,

As with many bloggers, we've been using royalty free images for many years.  Many bloggers make use of images from Flickr and we have too but you can't always find the right image there. I've even made a point to take more photos of people, places and things while traveling for later use in blog posts like the one to the right. The stock photo site we've been using for several years recently decided to essentially double their prices (no matter how they spin it,