This weekend, self-proclaimed "foodies" with a gift for prose will descend on San Francisco for the first ever Foodbuzz.com Blogger Festival. The three-day gathering will culminate with an awards ceremony where Foodbuzz will hand out golden forks to the top food blogs in a number of categories (everything from "Best Photography Blog" to "Blogger you would most like to cook a meal for you"). Foodbuzz says it received over 3,500 food blog nominations -- if anything, that's a ton of calories.
You can keep tabs on Clean Plate Charlie's Foodbuzz.com profile here.
What makes Foodbuzz interesting is the site is essentially a social
network for food bloggers and their readers. Each day, Foodbuzz ranks
its top articles, recipes, and blog posts for readers to share and
comment on. Similar to sites like Digg,
Foodbuzz users can rate posts and "buzz" them, shooting their links to
the top of the pile. Over 2,800 blogs currently publish to the site,
making it a fairly robust way for people to sort and fine food
information from around the globe. Today's top post about making homemade butter to pair with salt and radishes is a good example of a far reaching (and emotionally resonating) food blog.
The
festival starts Friday with a San Fran street food showcase and costs a
cool $350 to attend for bloggers (it's free for featured Foodbuzz
publishers).