Taiwan’s blogging community holds enough sway over travel and food trends to make or break a company, food critic Hu Tien-lan (胡天蘭) said yesterday at an award ceremony for the best blogs on Chunghwa Telecom Co’s (中華電信) Xuite Web site.
“Critical reviews by bloggers often hurt restaurants and some smaller lodging or travel-related enterprises. Favorable ones, on the other hand, can bring lots of business to places I’m not so sure deserve it,” Hu said.
The Blogger Top 100 list is sponsored by the Institute for Information Industry (資策會) and Chunghwa Telecom. It selects Xuite’s 100 top blogs in the food, travel and film review categories.
“For the geeks of the country hiding behind their PCs, the Blogger Top 100 is like winning the Oscars. And this award recognizes their thorough research, analysis, inspirational writing and contributions to the lives of other Internet users,” said Chen Jiun-shyan (陳俊賢), director of Chunghwa Telecom’s data communication business group.
“It is very easy to see the influence of bloggers on the economy. The voice of the masses, so to speak,” Chen said.
The top three domains in the food category were wineya, docjzs, and maomi. The top three travel bloggers were nana319, namaste, and clare777.
S0901423, kkman427, and oosleep won the film and television category.
“We are all creatures of our environment, but I hope through films, bloggers can experiment outside their comfort zones and share their experiences with the rest of the world,” movie critic Mai Jo-yu (麥若愚) said, adding that he hoped to see more diversity in next year’s blogs.
Research by Market Intelligence & Consulting Institute (產業情報研究所) indicates that Taiwanese bloggers have on average been blogging for around two years.
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