Why Twitter Won’t Kill Food Blogging

I love Twitter. For the quickest, most “real-time” news, you just can’t beat it. I myself might not tweet as often as some of my friends, but my TweetDeck is always on.

Now, much has been said about Twitter killing blogs (with reasons like “it’s easier to write/read”). And I can sort of see their point when it comes to news blogs, but food blogs? In spite of my obvious addiction to the service, I do NOT believe Twitter will kill food blogging. Here’s why:

Poor photo support.

The best food blogs are rich with photos because food blog readers like to see them. To post photos on Twitter, you need to use a third-party service such as TwitPic.

Recipes are longer than 140 characters.

Oh sure, you could post a recipe in a tweet, like say a simple ganache:

Ganache: Bring 1 cup heavy cream to boil. Pour over 1 cup chopped bittersweet chocolate. Let stand 5 minutes. Mix until melted.

But the truth is that most recipes require much more than Twitter’s 140 character limit to post.

Searching through tweets is a pain.

I often find myself returning to my favorite food blogs to search for posts and recipes I remember reading in the past- sometimes a long time in the past- which is why the search function of a blog is so important to me. Because Twitter is so “real-time”, tweets even from just a few hours ago can be difficult to find.

Of course, Twitter is a great tool for those who have an existing food blog- you can use it to post real-time updates as you test recipes, try out a new restaurant, or simply alert your readers to new posts on your blog. Twitter’s usefulness can’t be denied- we have one for FoodBloggers, after all- but it won’t kill food blogs.

Do you tweet rather than food blog?