Comments on: Plan Your Thanksgiving Meal (and Others) with FamilyOven

By: @ BobW

@ BobW — Sat, 17 Nov 2007 00:49:31 +0000

@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.

By: sandrine

sandrine — Fri, 16 Nov 2007 23:43:30 +0000

@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.

By: Art

Art — Fri, 16 Nov 2007 16:13:47 +0000

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.

By: Andrew

Andrew — Fri, 16 Nov 2007 15:25:20 +0000

It’s funny how this message blog turned into a game of telephone, where we start the conversation discussing a great cooking website in FamilyOven.com, and end in erroneous websites that stupid people wish to promote for themselves. Hey, here’s a suggestion, stop publicizing your loser websites on someone’s elses claim to fame, and start cooking meals from Familyoven.com. It could get you a date, losers.

By: El Cocinero Fiel

El Cocinero Fiel — Fri, 16 Nov 2007 13:35:05 +0000

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.

By: Foodie Pam

Foodie Pam — Fri, 16 Nov 2007 05:20:28 +0000

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.

By: Hamid

Hamid — Fri, 16 Nov 2007 04:07:57 +0000

Very informative site. Friendly designe. Thanks for showing it in your site.

By: who's kidding who

who's kidding who — Fri, 16 Nov 2007 04:01:31 +0000

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.

By: Foodie

Foodie — Fri, 16 Nov 2007 03:23:19 +0000

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.

By: Match Point

Match Point — Fri, 16 Nov 2007 03:17:13 +0000

@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.

By: heavy_eater

heavy_eater — Fri, 16 Nov 2007 01:49:06 +0000

chow.com is byfar the best foodie site

By: BB

BB — Fri, 16 Nov 2007 01:08:50 +0000

# 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

By: BB

BB — Fri, 16 Nov 2007 00:56:34 +0000

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.

By: PR

PR — Fri, 16 Nov 2007 00:51:58 +0000

i think this site is a great idea.

By: K.T.

K.T. — Fri, 16 Nov 2007 00:24:27 +0000

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.

By: Ray

Ray — Fri, 16 Nov 2007 00:23:50 +0000

Looks like the recipe for Haterade is one touch blog coverage and two spoonfuls of envy. Go FamilyOven!

By: yongfook

yongfook — Fri, 16 Nov 2007 00:17:41 +0000

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 :/

By: Michael Martine

Michael Martine — Fri, 16 Nov 2007 00:10:50 +0000

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.

By: Firoz

Firoz — Thu, 15 Nov 2007 23:50:08 +0000

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)

By: gary gonzales

gary gonzales — Thu, 15 Nov 2007 23:44:46 +0000

@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.

By: Steve Murch

Steve Murch — Thu, 15 Nov 2007 23:38:27 +0000

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!

By: Chewy

Chewy — Thu, 15 Nov 2007 23:31:10 +0000

I think that this a new way at looking at cooking websites by adding a myspace/facebook feature to it. Good job

By: Alex

Alex — Thu, 15 Nov 2007 23:28:36 +0000

I like the site… Not only is it cool, but, also useful.

By: BRadC

BRadC — Thu, 15 Nov 2007 23:15:29 +0000

@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?

By: saml

saml — Thu, 15 Nov 2007 23:02:56 +0000

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.