According to some technogeek resource that is so super specially techie that I actually forgot what it was, there’s a new blog born every minute. Or is it every second? That’s just an average, because my guess is that it’s probably more like every ten minutes, but the rate at which food blogs are literally exploding into the blogosphere raises that average to the astounding overall statistic.
Most of the food blogs are personal diaries with photos that chronicle daily or weekly cooking and eating. Some focus on a country's or cultural cuisine, or even on a specific food type. Some food blogs follow many more restaurant adventures (like me!), and some others are more food news-oriented, picking up bits and bites and gourmet gossip and consolidating them all in one delicious blog spot. Whatever the specific focus (on non-focus, as it may be), the underlying shared theme is always one thing...food.
Enter swish swashbuckling slashfood, an uber blog that covers all things foodie from every corner of the world with a huge team of contributors who range in background from stay-at-home kitchen cooks to professional chefs, from amateur blog-for-hobby-ers to professional food journalists. It launched on Friday with a backlog of about 200 delicious pre-launch posts. What a splash, slashfood!
tags :: food : and drink : restaurants : reviews : blogs : blogging
Jennifer says
Oh my! These guys are prolific!
Anonymous says
And not particularly generous to their contributors!
MizD says
Ah, I thought that looked familiar. See the Food Blog S'cool post here for the nitty gritty details on just how horrible their contract is. Lacheesemonger is right. They're the McDonald's of food blogging. No, with that contract, they're worse. They're Wal-Mart.
sarah says
oi, i didn't intend for this to turn into a bash-slash-food session though everyone is always entitled to their opinions, and are alwayss welcome to express them here.
i do appreciate the good intentions of you guys wanting to make me feel better about my own blog! but i'm afraid i didn't come across the way i wanted to, because i am actually going to contribute to slashfood - you know, they've got quite a few foodies, food nerds, wine nerds, professionals, but they gotta maintain their quota of amateurs, too :)
i don't know that i can keep pace with some of the high volume posters, but i don't see it as a race. just going to post when there's something good to post :)
Sam says
two of my posts got mentioned on slash food and i got a lot of extra hits because of it. It's a whole new more mainstream audience/different type of blog reader.
sarah says
yeah! i think slashfood will drive a lot of traffic to the regular blogs that we know. the slashfoodies regularly travel the food blogosphere and i see at least two to three posts a day that point to blogs like sam's, the amateur gourmet's, chocolate and zucchini, chez pim, etc. hopefully they will highlight some of the newer, smaller blogs that deserve some good attention, too :)
Owen says
I have mixed feelings. I totally agree with the quality versus quantity thing and I also disapprove of the money side of the equation. I know bloggers who work for the (already very big) organization behind slashfood. I also recognize many of the current posters as expert contributors in other areas - makes me wonder how expert they are about food.
Also, the ones I know doing it have their regular blogs suffer as a consequence. Just a warning.
On the other hand, bringing a wider audience can only help. The more the merrier, etc. I'm happy to see them but a quick troll through my regular food blog list gets me more than they are getting me right now...
Easy Eats says
I must say, I had no idea there were this many food blogs before I started mine, only a couple I've ran across my accident. I mean, I just ran across this one right now! Very cool!
I guess I am one of those tiny blogs. =)
jonah says
we will miss you at la.foodblogging sarah!
Jennifer says
I'm starting to have a change of heart. At first I was really excited...but then as my newsreader kept getting inundated with post after post from Slashfood I realized a lot of the posts were just summaries of posts on other food blogs. I think this is good to drive traffic to smaller blogs, but it seems like a lot of filler. Is there really a quota contributors have to meet?
sarah says
i think that the purpose is to have something food-related for everyone in order to reach a very wide audience...so there is a lot of stuff that is interesting to different people. i'll say that on any given day, about forty percent of the posts are really interesting to me. the stuff about cooking gadgets, technology, etc., are not as interesting, you know? but there have got to be some people out there who find that stuff fascinating, right? lol!
as far as my own contributions, i am really trying to stay within my own area of interests: los angeles; chinese, japanese, and korean cuisine; cocktails and drinks; how much i hate certain foods, lol! which means i am not as prolific as some other contributors.
and i'm going to try as much as i can to have original content. i like good, thoughtful and thought-provoking commentary posts about other people's blogs, but i'm not as fond of simple summaries, either.
quanton says
I recently came across your blog and have been reading along. I thought I would leave my first comment. I don't know what to say except that I have enjoyed reading. Nice blog. I will keep visiting this blog very often.
Sarah
http://grillsblog.com
quanton says
I recently came across your blog and have been reading along. I thought I would leave my first comment. I don't know what to say except that I have enjoyed reading. Nice blog. I will keep visiting this blog very often.
Sarah
http://grillsblog.com
clark says
I recently came across your blog and have been reading along. I thought I would leave my first comment. I don't know what to say except that I have enjoyed reading. Nice blog. I will keep visiting this blog very often.
Joannah
http://2gbmemory.net
Ja Declue says
good article , hope to see more...