Yesterday, I had a chance to discuss DC-based FamilyOven with one of its founders, Sean Shadmand. Sean and his co-founder, Isaac Mosquera, are building a thriving community around recipes, and more generally, food.
FamilyOven is by no means the first website for recipes (see iChef, Epicurious, Allrecipes, GroupRecipes, KitchenBug, RecipeZaar, Food Network, AOL Food, Cooks.com and Cooking.com to name a few). However, FamilyOven has been implementing many features that make it preferable to these other sites.
The site indexes over 500,000 recipes, most of which are pulled in from other websites such as Allrecipes and RecipeZaar, but many of which are submitted by FamilyOven users directly to the site. You don’t have to worry about missing out on recipes because they are all included together in the site’s search and browsing results.
Besides bringing a lot of recipes together in one place, FamilyOven has been designed to help users find just which recipes they actually want to use. You can search for recipes not only by using basic keywords but also by using the names of ingredients that you want to include or exclude from the results. Have a craving for Oreo and mint? Search for “desserts” with “oreo mint”. Search results can also be refined with “one-click filters” like “cake” and “christmas” displayed on the right side of the page. The result listing for each recipe displays a good deal of information so you don’t need to click away from the results to decide whether you are interested in the recipe. Hover your cursor over ingredients and a popup will show you all of them. A Digg-like “chomps” rating will also tell you how many other users like the recipe. Once you do find a recipe you like, you can save it to your collection and add just the ingredients you’re missing to a shopping list.
FamilyOven is also a social network and so, naturally, you can check out the recipes that others have contributed or given their stamps of approval. Profile pages highlight users’ favorite recipes, any food-related videos they have contributed, all the recipes they have uploaded, and all the recipes they have “saved for later”. Of course, a standard friends list and a “wall” for posting messages are included, too. Interestingly, the founders of FamilyOven encourage even dining establishments to make profile pages for themselves with which they can share the recipes they use at their restaurants. It’ll be interesting to see how many restaurants take advantage of this opportunity, and how FamilyOven expands functionality to let you search for the recipes of local establishments.
While FamilyOven does not focus on instructional videos (you can’t search for them), the site does provide a section that aggregates all of the videos uploaded by members. Therefore, it does compete with Cookshow, a cooking website geared towards instructional videos that we’ve covered before.
Sean and Isaac say they are constantly looking for ways to improve FamilyOven and will actively respond to users’ suggestions. Just yesterday they added a feature with which users can recommend beverages that go well with particular recipes. So far their hands-on attention has paid off; only after a few months of full-time work, they have reached 300,000+ monthly uniques with 1.5 million+ monthly page views.
I like the idea but the name is a little disturbing.
Stupid. I can’t understand why Arrington covers stupid companies like this.
There are thousands of good startups, yet he chooses to cover this horrible idea that’s only relevant one day out of the year.
It’s gotta be another case of bloggers covering their friends’ startups.
Sean and Isaac are great guys-. What they are doing is very cool to me.
Nice info and very good site.
eh
I love the “recommended beverages” feature and that you can search for recipes by specific ingredients. Great idea! Anyone that truly enjoys the art of gastronomy will know that this site is relevant every day out of the year and not just around Thanksgiving!
I have found some great recipes on this site.
Very easy to find food that you are interested in.
It’s a great site, that is if you like food and enjoy cooking.
I am a foodie and cook a lot, but I really don’t see what is so special about this website. Social networking and recipe database? Are you f- kidding me?
There are so really great cooking blogs and discussion forums out there, but spidering other people’s recipes does not make a viable business.
Well, if it doesn’t work out, it can keep the name and try to become a pregnancy site.
#2 – Mark: You’re wrong in so many ways. 1) these guys are not my friends 2) this website’s not relevant only one day out of the year, and 3) it’s not stupid…cooking information is big business. oh, and 4) i’m not arrington
Great site, it’s awesome to see DC startups on here
FamilyOven will continue to grow in popularity, the founders really know what they’re doing
Oh god.
These are the guys from Tagged.com. Quite possibly the internet’s biggest spammers. They have been sued for the single largest dollar amount in the history of the CAN-SPAM ACT.
Read the article: http://www.thew...pam_Penalty.cfm
Besides that, this is a dreadful little site.
I’m friends with one of the founders. He actually came from xmradio/future inc. I didn’t even know what tagged.com is until now. He’s a nice guy. The site is cool and stop hatin’.
Bravooo to you founders of familyoven.
Here is a wonderful site for all ,friends & family top chef’s & avrage cooks.
It has been a positive site forand me to share & collect my & family frinds. recipes , that some day i wll publish by a click of a button.
I don’t understand how Techcrunch can think this is great idea and a well-executed site, but then go and rant against the “attack of the splogs.” I’m not being snarky; I’m honestly curious to hear what the difference is.
The thing about FamilyOven and All Recipes and all the other user-submitted recipe sites is that the recipes generally suck. Who cares how many there are? Do you really want to search 500k recipes? Why? (Or, rather, how?) FamilyOven has 3543 recipes for spaghetti carbonara. Which one would you make tonight? Will you sift through all of them? The trick is not to index 500,000 recipes. The trick is to index good ones. Unlike other social networking sites built around a lifestyle, cooking is a skill. Without good recipes, I just don’t care what other cool features a site gives me.
And with 500,000 recipes, is 1.5 million page views that great? I think there’s a corollary here to box office gross vs. gross per theater. $20 million is a nice amount of money to make in a weekend, but not when it opens in 4000 theaters. FamilyOven: the “Wild Wild West” of recipe sites.
@saml
FamilyOven: the “Wild Wild West” of recipe sites.
Excellent.
Good question about the different coverage shown when TC’s content being TWOC’d vs. Familyoven scraping other recipe sites.
Any insights Mark?
I like the site… Not only is it cool, but, also useful.
I think that this a new way at looking at cooking websites by adding a myspace/facebook feature to it. Good job
We here at BigOven (http://www.bigoven.com) have about the same level of traffic, cooking videos, social features, tagging, RSS feeds, and user-created content. Been out for about 3 years, and what makes us unique is we have downloadable, award-winning recipe software that lets you one-click import any recipes (and photos) you’d like, then drag and drop recipes onto shopping lists and meal plans…
Still waiting for the first techcrunch mention.
Happy Thanksgiving everyone!
@saml, i think you so miss the point. But never the less you are entitled to your opinion. As someone who has been a good for over 15 years, i find the site very very useful. Not only that cooking is a art like you pointed out but when you do as long as i have, you will notice that it helps when you get suggestions, from others too.
Regardless of whether the site has 500k or 2m recipies, its serves its purpose, to provide information on recipes to its users. end of story. have you searched say a yahoo or google lately for a recipe? good luck trying to find something there.
you are either a good cook and like the site or you cant even boil water and dislike it.
I agree with saml. For an excellent alternative to these recipe sites, check out the BBC’s Food website: it’s nicely designed, has recipes from chefs and professional cooks as well as general food articles
http://www.bbc.co.uk/food/
The ‘Get Cooking’ feature of video demonstrations of recipes is excellent. Unfortunately, it’s only available to UK users.
(By the way, a search for spaghetti carbonara brings back just 7 results on the BBC food site)
Glad to see I’m not the only one who finds the name disturbing. Pizza ovens cook pizza. Bread ovens bake bread. Family ovens cook…
Ewww.
why techcrunch never gives any love to http://opensourcefood.com – not even a mention in the “other sites like this” – when I’m a regular commenter here frustrates me to no end :/
Looks like the recipe for Haterade is one touch blog coverage and two spoonfuls of envy. Go FamilyOven!
I heard about this website a month or so ago from a friend. I checked it out and left the site after 5 mins when I remembered that I never cook. Since then, I’ve had 3 friends/co-workers randomly ask me if I’ve used familyoven and talk about how much they like it better than whatever cooking site they were using before. Looks like this site has already built a loyal base.
bob w sounds like he’s angry at life. Oh god! a company they used to work for got sued…I hate this site now. the details are in this article I happen to have printed on my chest.
i think this site is a great idea.
FYI – when one creates an account/profile at familyoven – the zip code that is entered when establishing the account is used to publicly display your city name – and worse, profile owner cannot edit their location data whatsoever.
# 23 -
yongfook, thank you for sharing http://opensourcefood.com – this site does it right – no shady data collection here
from a true foodie – thank you
chow.com is byfar the best foodie site
@BB – Please note the word “Beta” clearly displayed in the top left hand corner of the site. Most internet users understand that, when a site is in beta, their experience won’t be perfect.
Love the site! They have managed to put together a great database of recipes to search, an easy way to search for them, and a great community of foodies on top of it. It’s amazing what 2 people can do in just a couple of months. I think Familyoven.com has a bight future ahead of them.
I love how blatantly apparent the shill comments are. I always get a great kick out of that. Their fingers must be getting tired typing all these “good reviews” in.
To anyone with *ANY* knowledge of the Internet, this site is quite obviously poorly done. Does anyone else not see that it just scrapes content with questionable legality?
Sticking with Chowhound here.
Very informative site. Friendly designe. Thanks for showing it in your site.
I agree that searching for quality recipes is difficult with so many websites, cookbooks and cooking magazines available today. That’s why I created http://www.projectfoodie.com to let people find, keep track of, and personalize recipes from known published sources on one web destination. We’re still enhancing the site but right now foodies can find recipes from Bon Appetit, Cooking Light, Cooks Illustrated, Gourmet, and Food & Wine.
I hope it is not stupid. I am launching a very similar thing in January, for Spanish speakers. But my business model is based on making video recipes as a mean to attract people. Any investor around? See you at elcocinerofiel.blogspot.com.
Best.
Good site,
In a way its like google but for recipes. I have used it a few times in the past. I wish I could find more copycat recipes though. Also wish there was search option for more fine dining. No sure if any sites even have that. For now this site gives me the most options when I want a recipe.
@gary gonzales
I’m a fantastic cook and I can’t stand the site.
“Regardless of whether the site has 500k or 2m recipies, its serves its purpose, to provide information on recipes to its users. end of story. have you searched say a yahoo or google lately for a recipe? good luck trying to find something there.”
What’s the difference between Family Oven and Google? Well, for one, Google directs me to sites that actually test recipes. FamilyOven steals page views from sites like All Recipes that already promote stealing recipes from people who have tested them. It’s like a pyramid scheme.
I am active in many online cooking/food communities, and no one I know — no one — uses FamilyOven or All Recipes or any of the user-generated recipe sites, because they’re generally bad. I agree with saml about that. The only thing those sites are good for is getting an idea about what to cook. I would never trust a recipe from them.
@Bob W — So does that mean that every single person that has ever worked with Greg or Johann @ Tagged or Jumpstart is a spammer?
It’s almost like saying if you eat meat, you must hate animals. Or because I’m friends with Barry Bonds, I surely use steriods.
Your comment is ridiculous.