(Jul 22, 2009) Nora Ephron’s new movie Julie & Julia (opening Aug. 7th) does for blogging what her 1998 movie You’ve Got Mail did for email. The movie is based on the true stories of two very different women: Julia Child, the first celebrity cooking show host and author of the iconic Mastering the Art of French Cooking (in its 49th printing); and Julie Powell, a would-be writer who decides to spend a year cooking every recipe in that cookbook and blogging about it. Powell’s blog, “The Julie/Julia Project” debuted in 2002 and her resulting book Julie & Julia was published in 2005.
It is a wonderful story on many levels. Julie discovers that blogging allows her to be a “writer” without benefit of publisher and she builds a community of readers along the way. It is the forerunner of what we accept today as the community created by social media platforms. Those various platforms reach well beyond blogging and into social networking sites such as Facebook and micro-blogging sites like Twitter.Read More