Crispy craze

Over the past few years fans have spread their ceaseless love of the greasy meat over the Internet like a dollop of Baconnaise over more bacon. Blogs such as Mr. Baconpants and Bacon Today offer followers a running commentary on the world of bacon. Major post topics include heart-attack recipes such as the Bacon Explosion—a recipe employing two pounds of bacon, two pounds of Italian sausage and as much barbecue sauce as possible, experiments with bacon and alcohol and reviews of bacon-themed products (bacon lip balm, anyone?).

Yes, the blogs and their subscribers are obsessed with bacon, but they are not alone. The Bivings Group, a public relations firm specializing in tracking Internet trends, published a report in May 2009 demonstrating bacon’s power in social media. According to their findings, the word bacon and its derivatives such as baconitis and baconization have been included in more than 1.6 million tweets since the start of Twitter in 2006. Sausage, another pork-based breakfast food, has received only 120,000 tweets.

The Western Front