Obsession's 5th
Take the OWF 5-year Anniversary Reader Survey
Five years ago today the word blog had barely escaped the jargon of the tech savvy. Most examples were technical discussions or chatty online journals. Only a few focused exclusively on food. Julie Powell had made one post but had not yet entered the stratosphere of Internet celebrity. Hillel Cooperman had been publishing detailed posts and stunning pictures of restaurant meals for just about a month. The only established and well-read food blog was Bruce Cole's Saute Wednesday, now retired in favor of Edible Nation.
Five years ago today I made my first post, setting up a blog at the urging of friends who wanted my rambling emails out of their inboxes. Other friends pushed me to blog so that I could practice writing; at the time, I only aspired to the role of food and wine writer. (I used a cleaned-up version of an early post to get my first writing assignment, though I didn’t mention my blog in pitches until a couple of years ago.)
Five years ago today there was no food blog community, just a handful of food blogs. I’m not even sure we called ourselves food blogs yet. No Heidi, no Clotilde, no Adam, no Josh. Weird, huh? Today, of course, there are thousands of us.
I remember the first time my daily count of visitors went over 100. And I remember when it went over 1000. The numbers have kept climbing over the years, but Melissa and I ask the same question now that we did then: Who are all you people?
Now I’d like to find out. For OWF’s fifth anniversary, I’ve put together a survey. I want to hear what you do and don’t like, and I want to know a little about you. The survey’s anonymous, and I'm not planning to use the information for marketing purposes—I will raise my sword against the visual onslaught of ads for as long as I can. This is just a way to peer through the Internet's ducts and learn a bit more about my readers. Please take a moment to fill it out.
And as always, thanks for reading. Really. I never miss an opportunity to brag to friends about what a smart readership I’ve got.
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