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It's my tweet: What's your #foodcrack? |
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Thursday, 14 May 2009 |
In Twitter, social networking platform of the moment, tweets come in fast and furious, making culinary conversation a round-the-clock sport. Food writers, bloggers and enthusiasts have fully embraced the application, as Jane de Graaff discovers — and they are tweeting up a storm.
Social networking sites enter the public imagination once every year or two, luring pundits with the promise of new styles of interaction and the community-building opportunities that accompany them. Filling the space once occupied by Myspace and then Facebook, 'micro-blogging' platform Twitter is the latest tool to come to prominence — and the food community has wasted no time in making their mark.
A quick primer on Twitter speak: The '#' symbol allows Twitter searches to find related posts — e.g. '#chocolate' allows people to share their tips or thoughts on chocolate, while #NTTC connects users discussing the 'No Time To Cook' recipe challenge. A preceding '@' symbol denotes a Twitter username. - Ed.
 "Viet Hot and Sour soup is my #foodcrack. It's the tamarind. Would sell child's soul on eBay for a fix of it. What's your #foodcrack ?" tweets Ella Hall aka @divinepurple. It's an interesting question. A little earlier Australian Gourmet Traveller (@GourmetTweets) posted: "#spagbol of the day: Rodney Dunn's ragù alla Bolognese", along with a link to the recipe. So that's dinner all sorted.
Just a few days before that, when the swine flu hit the fan and spattered itself all over the news, food related tweets ranged from links to articles on the spread of the flu, to compressed recipes aimed at combating it. That's an awful lot of food tweeting going on out there, a lot of it from food bloggers and writers. So what is it that attracts these writers to the restrictive 140-character limit that is Twitter?
For Hall it's simple. "The immediacy of Twitter means that you know who has received or disseminated information much quicker than via a traditional blogging forum. If I post on my blog asking for a recipe, or a question about an ingredient, I might get ten responses over two weeks. With Twitter, ten people can respond within a minute… it all happens in real time."
Food and Drink Editor for Time Out Sydney magazine, Myffy Rigby (@myffyrigby) agrees. "It's attractive for people in the [food] industry as it's instant, snappy and fun and it's open forum." An avid tweeter, Rigby uses her posts to share and gather up-to-date information and stay on top of the food industry and its trends. "People share stuff about restaurants opening and shutting, menu changes, who's got the best suckling pig. It's very useful like that."
According to business and food journalist and blogger Ed Charles (@tomatom) it's more than just immediacy that draws food bloggers and writers to the Twitter platform. "The advantage of Twitter is that it can introduce you to a whole new group of people. I've found local blogs I hadn't visited before and made some great contacts with industry people and chefs. For instance, the other night I had Mark Best from Marque in Sydney sharing his technique for peeling chestnuts by deep frying them." It's also generated traffic to his website. "Twitter is now the third major source of traffic for my blog after Google searches and links. Visitors from Twitter also spend longer on the site and go deeper into it. The audience is really high quality."
The food blogger known only as Stickyfingers (@stickifingers) shares the sentiment; "Twitter is an excellent forum for finding like minded people and networking professionally. Where once you needed to trawl through the comments section of certain blogs, you can now pick up on conversations on Twitter and even do a search for the writers you admire…or know of. Food writers are definitely sharing information and I can see that the barrier between online writers and the mainstream media is eroding via Twitter."
Melbourne food blogger Jackie Middleton (@eatingwithjack) has noticed a similar trend; "It's interesting the way traditional-media food writers are interacting with the tweeting bloggers," she says. "I've noticed a very tight correlation between what people are talking about online and what appears in the press and magazines in the next weeks."
Sydney food blogger, Reem Abdelaty (@Reemski), has taken this trend-spotting and networking aspect one step further again. With the help of Twitter she has gathered support for an Australian Food Bloggers Conference, with the potential to be hosted by the Melbourne Food and Wine Festival in 2010. "Twitter is what pointed me towards the international food blogger conference via @SeattleTallPopp, and when I saw it, I was just so excited. Then Twitter helped pass the message on, not just via my immediate food blogger contacts, but across Australia and NZ, and internationally."
Stickyfingers agrees. "In terms of 'firsts' the Australian Food Bloggers Conference (#AFBC) was first discussed on Twitter. Prior to this medium, there wouldn't have been enough national banter to get it off the ground in just a matter of days, as has happened. It's moving at quite a pace and the most vocal seem to be the tweeters thus far."
But in amongst all this immediate information and networking in food Twitter circles, are there any downfalls? "Information is more topical on Twitter, but more reliable on blogs." Says Stickyfingers, "with Twitter, it's all relative to what time you're online, or have your phone accessing tweets. If everyone you want to reach is offline, your tweet can be lost in a sea of messages." A sort of information overload.
Middleton agrees; "I'm finding that time spent reading the people I enjoy following has chewed up my blog reading and writing time, I need to find a balance… the twenty-four-seven nature of Twitter makes it hard to keep track… I like the quality over quantity idea of who I follow." For Rigby, "it's great for connecting with other peeps in your field. [But] It's also very addictive. Over-tweeting can be worse than saying nothing at all," she adds, "[and] I think it's important to remember that it's a public forum - slagging off restaurants unnecessarily by name is uncool and very bad form."
So, let's hope that if you do make a bad call in the public arena, that it gets a little bit lost in the stream of more positive food information and networking. Now, what's your #foodcrack?
Jane de Graaff
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