Every Friday, Twitter users (or "tweeters," if you want to be colloquial) suggest feeds for other users to follow. It's called "Follow Friday." In Madison, an active community of bloggers, journalists, marketing professionals and others has sprung up, communicating with 140 characters or less.
Nichole Fromm and JM Rasmus
@madisonatoz
Description (140 characters)
Food lovers and/or geeks, rejoice: restaurant reviews with an alphabetical twist. Thoughtful, local, delicious and friendly; always helpful.
Recent Tweets:
The Cadillac of food carts.http://www.madisonatoz.com/2010/07/hibachi-hut.html
Funding for 100+ Partner Shares CSA memberships, Underground Food, Furthermore Beer, Greasy Gears - can @bikethebarns get any more awesome?
Today's #twitpictrivia is very good squash soup in very low light (hint): http://twitpic.com/2m5fjz
Madison is a food-lover's paradise, but navigating the bounty found here can be daunting. That's where Nichole Fromm and JM Rasmus come in. The couple tweets as @madisonatoz, and maintains a Twitter, the couple says, has changed how restaurants and their patrons think. "Someone will try the new place and go, 'This is awesome,' and they tweet it to the rest of the local tweeps and suddenly you cannot get a table," says JM. "Twitter's so fast, it's like a contagion." Nichole tends to tweet more than JM, simply because she has a smartphone and he doesn't. She uses the Twitter mobile application because they use a lot of lists to organize their feed. And their feed is fairly organized. They even have a tweeting schedule, which includes a fun #twitpictrivia question (usually involving guessing which restaurant is pictured), and sharing the latest of the over 3000 reviews they've bookmarked on de.lic.io.us on Fridays. The couple currently has 566 followers, and when they reach 578, Nichole and JM are going to celebrate: that's the number of restaurants they've reviewed so far. After all that work, they only regret a handful of tweets, "mostly when we hit the snark too hard." Why should Madisonians follow @madisonatoz? For starters, their feed is fun, vibrant, and delicious. They review area restaurants with a fair and balanced style -- and their blog divides reviews by Coke or Pepsi. As JM says: "Anyone with room for a few tweets a week about Madison-area restaurants, and the occasional late-night pop culture hashtag fest, will probably like what we tweet." Follow Nichole and JM on Twitter at @madisonatoz.