Remember the days when continually old media bagged food bloggers?
The same thing isn’t happening with Twitter, a cross between texting and direct messaging – in a way a microblog. Could it be – to the media at least – that Twitter is the acceptable face of social media? Or is it because Twitter is so simple to use that it is really easy to understand?
If you haven’t used it, the idea is you post a 140 character message from your computer (try Tweetdeck) or via wireless through a smartphone client (on the iPhone Twitterific which costs a few dollars but seems a lot better than Twitterlator). The fact that you can update simply with a text message from a mobile phone is one of the reasons for Twitter’s popularity; you don’t even need a computer or a decent phone.
You can follow other people’s tweets and they can follow yours although you can also lock your account from unwanted eyes.
The advantage over blogging is that you don’t have to spend hours composing a post or styling photos. The disadvantage is that it is a distraction from work during the day. In the evenings watching crap TV it is welcome.
Locally you’ll find The Australian’s John Lethlean and Necia Wilden, SMH’s Simon Thomsen, The Age’s Michael Harden and Gourmet Traveller’s Pat Nourse (recommended) using it to varying degrees, some just following.
Internationally, LA Times Food, Gourmet Magazine’s Ruth Reichl and the New York Times’ Mark Bittman and Burghound are frequent users. You can also find the Deck of Secrets’ (known available as a great iPhone application) Michelle Matthews on her travels.
Well known international bloggers on twitter include Simply Recipes, Chocolate & Zuchinni, Chez Pim, Michael Ruhlman, David Lebovitz, Kalyn’s Kitchen, Lucullian Delights and well as blog networks such as Slashfood or social networks such as Urbanspoon.
And let’s not forget the celebrities. Jamie Oliver is there. But my favourite has to be Stephen Fry who has popularized “voddie” (search #voddie) in the bath and is as interesting and engaging as (it turns out fake) Brad Pitt is worthy boring. Not only is Stephen, who is currently suffering from tequila, followed by over 220,000 people but he follows some 50,000 myself included and engages with his followers. He has also become a hero in fighting internet censorship in NZ and blacked out his avatar to support the cause.
As with blogging there are no rules apart from the usual online entiquette. You can write and say pretty much anything and simply just tweet what you are eating. Or you can engage in conversations. With the installation of a nifty plug-in you can send updates every time you publish a blog post.
You can ask questions about where to eat and indeed one brave journalist visited Paris using only twitter for recommendations. You can follow trending topics and search nearby on a GPS enabled phone, for terms and subscrbe to keywords such as #vicfires or #bushfires or #socialbreakfast. In fact during the recent bush fires twitter came into its own with the first source of news often being the 774 twitter.
Addition: James Halliday’s Wine Companion
Local twitterers(some are locked) include local bloggers,social media addicts and food and wine industry professionals. Have I left anybody out?
abstractg
Bellabacchante
Bobscider
Bronmarshall
Chandonwine
Chocolatesuze
Coffeedownunder
Crazybrave
Eatingwithjack
Figandcherry
foodtourist
Frombecca
Grab Your Fork
Haalo
Jen_Palate
Jenius
KathrynElliott
Kirrihill
Kitchenwench
luxter
manthatcooks
Ms Gourmet
Mutemonkey
myachinghead
noodlesue
Notquitenigella
phil_lees
Snapperwolf
stephie17
Teusnerwine
thefrankreport
Tomatom (me)
Tummmyrumbles
Wineweek
Winosandfoodies
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{ 23 comments… read them below or add one }
Great list – will we see you at a social media breakfast soon??
Yes you will see me soon although does it have to be so early in the morning?
It’s breakfast not brunch! There are other events for afternoon beers – check out my ’silicon beach Melbourne’ blog post for the list
I love Twitter. I have a lock on to avoid marketing companies but am happy to be followed by genuine w***s and F*****s.
Well I started one up but haven’t been using it much. Must get on to that
http://twitter.com/tummyrumbles/
My twitter account (@phil_lees) is pretty slack – I mostly use it as a link dump rather than a communication channel and for the most part it is only peripherally related to food.
It’s going to be interesting to see how twitter manages to keep the corporate spam in check.
Phil – Tons of Marketers and Advertising people are using Twitter. Although they are typically early adopters of technology, many are exploring the medium to explore its ad potential, especially as product placement is one of the big growth sectors in food media.
It is fast becoming obvious to them that Twitter subscribers quickly shut out anything that even vaguely has a whiff of a corporate sell. However some TV shows such as Mad Men are having some success by hiring people to tweet on behalf of the show’s characters. Therein may lie the medium’s money making potential. Customer service and client relationship building is another potential area for Twitter to generate capital.
As a news generating medium both Flickr & Twitter are far outstripping both blogs and traditional media in terms of their rapid delivery of information. So unless you can work it to your advantage, it could be bad news for journo’s.
Some research on the business front drew the conclusion that some Twitter users fall into the following camps:
a) people with short attentions spans
b) people whose writing skills are too poor for them to blog
c) egomaniacs
d) time wasters
e) users have a very small number of friends compared to the number of followers and followees they declare.
Personally I don’t want to know what my friends are doing/thinking/eating/feeling ALL the time. Seeing some people ‘warts and all’ would possibly kill the romance – or the sentimental cornerstones of friendship – that keep me mesmersied and enthused by certain people in my life.
I wonder, is Twitter to blame for the decreasing number of food blog posts in my feed reader of late?
stickyfingers I hardly think your comment is doing it justice. Sure, there are spammers and marketers on there but the whole point of twitter is that it is a follow model not a friend model – asymmetric not reciprocal. If you don’t like marketers then don’t follow them!
I follow about 50 people most of the time and the amount of value I get from twitter every day is amazing. Hell, I wouldn’t be here right commenting right now if it weren’t for twitter because I saw the link posted there.
I don’t think you should get hung up on the medium too much. Blogs have been great for the last few years as the predominant channel for information but twitter is much more accessible and manageable for most people, so they will use it. There will be some really great foodie-twitters emerge from this, and that should be exciting. I don’t know about most people on the list here but I know @secretshq and I like getting her updates on new cafes and bars in Melbourne – the twitter format is great for little tip-offs because it is so compact.
The medium will continue to emerge, but the conversation will stay the same.
@rosshill
Ross your passion is evident. I am merely stating data dispassionately from the perspective of someone who advises on emerging trends, marketing strategy and business models for advertisers.
The opinion I give clients is that Twitter, as a medium, is embryonic and has potential – which emerging trends foretell. Blogging will remain to be a medium of interest to corporates along with the many other social networking mediums which target various market segments and channels.
You will find that another micro blogging application and other mediums will quickly surpass Twitter in the future.
As the great Fashion Editor, Diana Vreeland once said:
“Give ‘em what they never knew they wanted!”
I didn’t realise that you were an advertising consultant. From that perspective, there is massive potential if people can figure it out… but the odds aren’t good. Look at @garyvee – he sure does well from twitter. Most businesses don’t have time for social media though, and it is all about authenticity, not getting your PR person to tweet for you – because that’s just not gonna work!
I was approaching my comments from the view of somebody interested in food since this is mainly a food blog not an advertising blog
and for talking with people about restaurants twitter is fantastic. Just try some searches like http://search.twitter.com/search?q=coffee+melbourne
Ross – If your PR people can’t tweet (or for that matter, deliver “authenticity” in social media if that’s what you’re after) then you’re hiring the wrong people. Along with my (mostly) inactive personal account, I also manage an active corporate twitter account with multiple contributors; mostly to deliver news/PR and deal with customer questions. It’s very good for that.
It’s very bad for building real relationships, for that, you need to take the conversation somewhere else.
We at Wine and Food tube just joined, mainly use it to let people know that we have the video of the week.
@stickyfingers: As an egomaniacal time waster I take offense to you saying I cant spel good. Or writer proper. And I’ve got heaps of friends.
But seriously… as a content creator I initially signed up to post micro updates on my blog that would make it look like I was doing something when I really wasn’t. Also to post information that I wanted to convey that didn’t really necessitate a blog post. But then I got sucked into the whole addictive nature of following everyone and everything, and ended up taking it off my blog because it wasn’t relevant (or particularly decent).
Now I’m trying to cut back and keep it to specifically food or food related topics that I think someone might find useful, rather than how I am so excited that I finally got my “How I met your Mother” box set of DVD’s… (except that wouldn’t happen, I really hate that show).
I agree that Twitter is being jumped upon by marketers hoping for an easy way to get on board the clue train (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cluetrain_Manifesto). But most people are smart, and can see through fake attempts at connecting.
I think it’s a perfect way for bloggers to supplement their writing and can really help to create a fuller expression of who someone is.
Thanks for the link Ed, I’ve become much more twitter popular over the last couples of days!
I’ve been twittering for nearly two months and am constantly surprised at the amount of content the ‘professional food bloggers’ (ie the few internationally that have forged a lifestyle from blogging and the books etc that come with that) can and do supply. I’d love to be able to interact more on my blog but due to time restraints just can’t post daily, but as Matt mentioned Twittering makes it look like I am doing something, ie I do care about my blog and readers. They can follow me or just look at the feed on my site. I have been careful to make it strictly about stuff that would overwise be on the blog, if I had the time to properly write up all my thoughts.
I’m following just 2 dozen people and find it hard enough to keep up, don’t know if I have space for many more.
How do they, you do it??
Oh and why do i think the trad media are getting in on twittering and not blogs… committment. A blog is a lot of work, a twitter just makes you look like you have lots of friends thats why you are text messaging all the time!
Jack
Wow all this insight is fantastic – thank you.
Phil the authenticity is what makes Web2.0 Web2.0 – if you have PR people tweeting for you that’s from the web1.0 world. If people are tweeting support requests or complaints they are doing it because they think they will get a better result than going through official channels – which is sad.
Twitter is great for building relationships but you have to combine it with other mediums. I don’t know how many coffees I have had as a result of tweets – the power to a company is the individual development and promotion.
Ross – What makes a twitter account an unofficial channel?
Didn’t realise that about Stephen Fry, what a great Tweeter! Glad to have found you on twitter too Ed
Phil – lots of companies have set up twitter accounts for ’support’ purposes, like Telstra. What I mean by unofficial is that they generally respond really quickly to twitter complaints, while if you actually call or email them it takes forever and is generally painful. Twitter is great for showing individuals within companies because you can make a more authentic connection – but that takes a very different mindset from what most of them are doing right now. Don’t get me wrong, there are some great ones but…. hmm I think we’re pretty far off topic now
Game over, goodnight.
Great post. I have just joined twitter and find its distinct style of communication so interesting. Thanks for the list of tweeps (!?)!
This is great, I’ve got a lot of foodies to follow! Thanks
Discovered your blog via Twitter! Busily adding all the fellow foodies you’ve listed – thanks.
add this on to your list!