LUNCH TIME!

By Michael de Souza, Executive Producer, South Africa and Esther Sutjiutama, BuzzCity Producer

Warning! If you haven’t had your lunch yet, run. This blog entry may make your mouth water and stomach shout for attention.
myGamma recently ran a contest called “Pick Your Dish”, inviting our members to submit examples of culinary content that they had posted online. We received entries from across the globe. Contestants submitted recipe-sharing moblogs, groups for discussing your favorite dishes and of course a lot of tasty-looking photos, like these:

The BuzzCity producers didn’t just pick the topic for this contest out of the blue. We’d noticed a big increase in the number of food-related images being posted within myGamma as well as in other areas of the mobile world.

Did you know, for example, that Twitter users have developed a shorthand for sharing recipes in less than 140 characters?

We used several criteria to judge entries in the “Pick Your Dish” contest:

• interesting or mouth-watering content
• consistent updates
• viewer comments

Throughout the contest period we received lots of messages from contestants’ friends and other myGamma members checking in about the results, to see if their favorite entry was a finalist. In the end, we selected three winners – Best Pix: Gybzy, a 19-year old Thai woman who shares recipes and photos; Best Blog: Geline, a 37-year old woman in Israel with a blog called CyberSoulmate Bakeshop; and Best Writer: Crazee Horse, a 39-year old man from South Carolina in the United States.

Crazee Horse’s moblog, “Poor Man’s Recipes” still ranks in myGamma’s top three, based on pageviews. The site shares inexpensive recipes like “Poor Lee’s Peanut Prawns,” a hot-and-spicey dish which can be prepared for just a few US dollars. Aside from its unique angle, what makes this moblog particularly good is that the author posts photos at each step as he cooks the dish.

In Indonesia, meanwhile, the mobile community takes virtual networking to an entirely different level. myGamma members there have created an online role-playing group where participants take on different characters at a cafe. One person acts like the manager, others like diners. They chat about items on the menu and other things as well.

Perhaps we shouldn’t be surprised by the increasing popularity of culinary-related items on the mobile internet. “Foodie” blogs have long ranked among the most popular internet blogs. Whether it’s sharing a passion for cooking, ranking restaurants, sharing info on good deals, dishing bad service or praising that special extra touch, the love of food is a topic that seems to unite us all – and it’s one that’s definitely spreading its wings in myGamma.