Forget those snooty folks who wouldn't stoop to letting a hot dog pass their lips. I'll take mine with mustard, sauerkraut or chili, thank you. The mustard and sauerkraut can go on by themselves or together. But the chili has to be all alone. And it has to be thick enough to stay put and not turn the bun soggy.

Ketchup or mustard seems one of the big dividing lines. Most people I know want one or the other, but not both. Relish is another divider. Personally, I think relish is best left on the grocer's shelf. Or maybe it could be used as paint pigment. But it should never ever make it's way onto any hot dog I'm going to eat.

I found a poll that showed about an even number of mustard users and misguided souls who put ketchup on their hot dogs. Relish, onions and cheese also are popular choices. But mayonnaise and Miracle Whip? On a hot dog? There's no accounting for some people's taste.

There's only one way to cook a hot dog: grilled over an open fire, the darker the better. My favorite recipe for boiling hot dogs is one I found on a Web site called Itsy's Hot Dog Kitchen: "Take two hot dogs. Place in 1/2qt pot. Bring to a boil for 10 min. Remove hot dogs and discard. Throw away water. Order out." Itsy? What kind of name is that?

The bun should be big enough to give you something to hold onto, but not big enough that you ever have more bread than meat in your mouth. If you remember the bun after you're done eating, you had the wrong one.

Why do they call them hot dogs?

It's easy to make fun of hot dogs. We've all heard the vague innuendo about the horrible things that go into them. Has anyone seen Fido lately? And we've all heard the claims that they'll give you cancer, clog your arteries or lower your social standing. But they taste so good.

With all the strong feelings generated by hot dogs, it was only a matter of time before the companies that make them found themselves participating in Facebook, Twitter and the other social media conversations to convince the rest of us to eat more of them. Or at least to buy our dogs from them.

For example, Ball Park Franks, Nathan's Famous and Oscar Mayer have taken the competitive fray over hot dogs to Facebook, Twitter, MySpace and the blogosphere. Ball Park and Nathan's Famous dogs seem to be dabbling in the social media arena more seriously than Oscar Mayer, as the results in the charts show.¹

Ball Park has 13 percent of the hot dog "share of voice" in social media venues and Nathan's Famous is close behind with 11 percent. Kudos to the PR team for Ball Park or Nathan's for taking the conversation online.

The positive-versus-negative tone of the comments is even more impressive -- 25 to 1 for Ball Park and 24 to 1 for Nathan's. We always look to outweigh our negatively rated coverage with positive impressions about a brand. But consumers are noticing that some of those comments appear to have been placed and paid for by the companies. So, it's not a measure of unbiased opinions.

And the real question is whether all this effort is really doing any good. That's not so clear. For example, the Ball Park and Nathan's arrows on the velocity graph -- a measure of how far and fast their social media comments traveled in a given time -- look pretty impressive until you understand what they show.

Over a four-month period Ball Park generated more than 500 comments and Nathan's more than 400 comments in the social media. And the total number of people who saw them? Under 5,000, which is smaller than the circulation of some neighborhood weekly newspapers.