My food blogging predictions for 2006

Could 2006 be the year that the local foodblog community seriously starts to challenge traditional media? Predictions are a dangerous thing. But I’m prepared to put my neck on the line about the growth of food blogging’s in popularity in Australia.
There are currently 49 local food blogs, about 80 per cent of them regularly updated. I reckon by this time next year there will be at least 250 – possibly more – if the current growth rate is continued.
My estimate is that newspapers may create a couple of hundred of thousands of words on food and wine a week and that the glossy food mags produce maybe an equal number of words on average per month. That’s maybe a million words a month which will be more than matched by food bloggers.
Currently the reach of foodbloggers isn’t that great. Based on current numbers and interviews with local food bloggers perhaps 40-50,000 visitors a week. If growth really is fivefold over the next year I’d expect traffic to grow at an even faster pace as the general public (who have heard of blogs but are largely ignorant to what a blog actually is) discover blogs as a source of food and drink fun. Could we be seeing some 300,000 people visiting blogs every week by the end of 2006? More?
Now that is a serious challenge toold-fashioned media.
The one thing that held back blogging locally was the lack of and the expense of broadband internet. That was until early in 2004 when Telstra led the market and introduced broadband internet for under $30 a month. Australia, in cities at least, has some of the cheapest broadband in the world although comapared to Europe and the US it is also the slowest.
Back when Tesltra introduced cheap broadband there were probably five serious food blogger locally. By the end of 2004 there were ten.
This was the year that food blogging really arrived with by July this year 35 local (I haven’t included the expats) food bloggers and near 50 today. This year’s growth of locally food bloggers is similar to the growth of blogs as mapped by Technorati. Back in July 2004 there were 3 million blogs according to Technorati. Within one year that had nearly quadrupled to 11.5 million and today there are 23.1 million.
Technorati says that about half these blogs are dormant. Locally within the food blogging community there are a few dormant ones. But from what I can see local food bloggers are more focused and dedicated than the general blogging community. I’d say over 80 per cent of us are active.
The difficulty if finding them and many local blogs aren’t using Technorati tags. I’d advise local blogger to claim their blogs and create a Technorati profile with the tag Australia+Food+Drink or locally, for example, Melbourne+food+drink.
Meanwhile, we’ll continue mapping new ones as we discover them.