Smokin' a Phattie's a New Social Networking Community for Barbequers

By B.L. Ochman Do what you love and success will follow is what my all-time fave client, Stew Leonard Sr., used to tell me. And that's what Smokin' a Phattie, the new social networking site for barbrque enthusiasts is about for its founder, Edward Garcia.

The beta of Smokin' a Phattie has lots of MySpace-type social media tools: blogs, friend networks, photo and recipe uploads, and events. "We'll be adding new features all the time and tweaking the ones we have to make them easier to use," Garcia told me. He's "Pit Boss" and "a huge barbeque enthusiast" who travels to compete in cook-offs, can discuss his special sauce til your mouth waters, and who also happens to be a principal in Proceed Technical Resources, an IT staffing, technology planning/strategy company.

Smokin a Phattie is the first of several hobby-related social media communities Garcia plans for the new company he's started, Social Media Investments LLC. It's so new it hasn't got a website yet, but Garcia says the next of the company's communities will launch within 30 days.

The business model is to be ad-supported, and, beyond that, for all of the hobby communities to be inter-related. There's big money in hobbies. Barbeque, for example, is a $12 billion industry according to The Hearth, Patio & Barbecue Association (HPBA), one of Smokin a Phattie's first advertisers.