Blog-world bites

Current trends in food blogs

By Liz Crain

March 23, 2007

After two months of Blog Feed profiles, it’s time to take off the bib, step away from the table, and digest.

We started this column with two intentions: to highlight notable blogs, which we’ve done, and broadcast food-blog news and culture, which we haven’t done so much of — until today, that is.

There’s a food blog for every taste. This illustration was created by Ximena Maier of the well-loved blog Lobstersquad.

With more than 200,000 food blogs to sample (that’s veteran food writer Dianne Jacob’s informal count), this is a culture well worth tracking.

Blog games

Call me crazy, but until recently I’d never heard of blog tag, also known in the blogosphere as a “meme” or “memetag.” It’s a quick online questionnaire with a particular theme that bloggers reply to on their blogs and then, in turn, forward to fellow bloggers.

I read that Richard Morris, of The Free Radical Report, was tagged in late December. Morris wrote:

For the uninitiated, I’m playing Blog-Tag, a suddenly very popular Internet game where the tagged blogger reveals five things about him or herself, then tags up to five more bloggers, who have to do the same. Childish? Of course it is and fun too!

Recently I’ve come across all kinds of bloggers who’ve been tagged: “You’re it!” Technology blogger Jeff Pulver, of The Jeff Pulver Blog, launched a version of blog tag on December 10, 2006 — the “Five Things About Me” meme — that has touched, or perhaps slapped, thousands of bloggers.

According to Pulver, “It was different than earlier strains of blog tag that could be found on Myspace.com, and was the first to reach out into the blogosphere, as far as I can tell.”

Well, I’m just happy to have learned through the game that Richard Morris knows how to milk a cow — which is probably better exercise for a food blogger than blog tag.

Do’s and don’ts

Food bloggers for the most part learn the ways of the Web by doing. But every once in a while, a generous blogger decides to broadcast some sage word of advice to would-be bloggers.

Munich food bloggers Nicky and Oliver of delicious:days recently posted a hefty — nearly 4,000 words — entry titled “Foodblogging — Do’s and Don’ts.” Advice is divvied into 15 sections covering everything from the advantages and disadvantages of RSS feeds and the proper blogroll pruning techniques to handling reader comments.

Another hot spot for food-blog education is Food Blog S’cool. Sam Breach, of the beloved Bay Area food blog Becks and Posh, started this forum two years ago in the hopes that would-be as well as experienced food bloggers would visit regularly to share tools of the trade.

I asked Breach about her project. She responded:

Copyright issues, content stealing, and dealing with PR solicitations are subjects that have been high-profile recently. But there is much more to it than that.

She added:

Blogging should be fun, not a chore, and if people are blogging because they feel they have to instead of because they want to, that will show through in the blog posts, and readers will lose interest. Passion and enthusiasm for the subject of food is a must.

With so much dialogue about blogging, it’s a wonder bloggers have time to actually blog. But it’s a good thing for us that they do.

Restaurant reviews

Food blogs that cover restaurants have been racking up lots of press in recent weeks. A February article in the New York Times takes on food bloggers’ power of the post.

It’s no secret that bloggy food reviewers have the upper hand when it comes to quick coverage, since copy desks, meticulous fact checking, and endless editorial meetings are practically non-existent in the food-blog realm.

The article points out that food bloggers, such as Augie of Augieland, can do things like eat at a restaurant 10 nights in a row and post a review the next day that trumps the timeliness, detail, and sheer word count of most print media.

Beyond the article’s scope, there’s the plain reality that print-media folks are generally much more difficult for readers to parley with than food bloggers.