February 28th, 2008
I am a member of Facebook, Urbanspoon, Snooth, and a frequent Twitterer. I gobble up social media networks when they make my life simpler or more fun. For some reason however, I still use old-fashioned recipe hunting methods. I buy big, glossy books, flip through our magazine, and maybe use a conventional recipe site like Epicurious.com. My recipe seeking habits lag far behind my habits in other spheres. Why is this?
For some reason there has been a wild proliferation of community restaurant review sites, while recipe sites were slow to develop. Sure, major food publications have libraries of recipes but where is the recipe site of a different color? Where is the site with a made up word in its title? There are countless blogs and other tools, like I’ve discussed before, but Web 2.0 recipe sites seemed missing from the marketplace, at least to my knowledge. I was intrigued recently to discover a few that are set to be revolutionary, recipe- finding tools.
In perusing these, I realized that I look for 4 specific things in a recipe site:
1) Food Porn. Everybody likes a sexy shot of tuna tartare or a four-cheese pizza. A great recipe site makes your mouth water and keeps you engaged with visual content. It’s no fun to surf a site that reads like a software installment guide.
2) Inventory. If I search for fava beans, there better be recipes for fava bean puree, roasted fava beans, fava bean pizza, etc. All different cooking techniques and skill levels should be represented as well. To test inventory I’ve chosen three random search terms: fava bean, porcini mushroom, and ceviche.
3) Inspiration. A great food site brings the recipes to you. One should go to the home page and feel nearly overwhelmed by suggestions, ideas, and options that entice.
4) Ease of use. As applied to any great website, nobody should have to think too hard to learn a new recipe site. Browsing for recipes should be relaxing and fun, not stressful.
A successful Web 2.0 recipe site should build on the original 4, while incorporating the great things we love about Web 2.0 like usability and community. Over the upcoming weeks I will introduce and rate a few of these. The first three will be GroupRecipes, CookThink, and OpenSourceFood. If you’ve come across others, suggest them here for inclusion in the series. Stay tuned!
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You knew it was only a matter of time, “Web 2.0″ sites are everywhere covering everything. I could definitely use one of these though for BBQ recipes during the summertime.
Ugh, why can’t there just be one be-all end-all social Web site?
Curious to see what you come up with…one thing though: is “usability” really a Web 2.0 thing?
@Lenn, you’re right. I got a bit lazy near the end there with my terminology. Usability is nothing new. I was trying to put a word to the trend of the cosmetics of 2.0 sites using large fonts, clean and simple layouts, cartoony images, etc. Do you have a good term for that? Stumped right now.
[...] mentioned in my first post, I’m on a hunt for the best “Web 2.0-esque” recipe site. I already know my [...]
[...] on with my quest to find the best, 2.0-esque recipe site, I’ll review CookThink.com. Last week I took a look [...]