A couple of week’s ago, we wrote about iFoods.tv, which was attempting to create “Facebook for foodies.” Recently, I was contacted by a very similarly named start up: iFood.tv (notice the lack of ‘s’). If iFoods.tv (s) is trying to become Facebook for foodies, then iFood.tv (no s) has already nailed MySpace for foodies.
As you might have guessed, iFood.tv is a social network built about users sharing and discussing recipes. Though it supports text/photo recipes, the site really emphasizes videos.
According to iFood.tv co-founder Sharib Khan, the site has more than 2000 recipes, 400 of which are videos. Many of the videos come from home cooks, but iFood.tv also has a production team that films professional chefs in the New York area (such as this one). Each video recipe is accompanied by a text summary, ingredients list, and instructions. The site also has correspondents, like The Tortilla Guy, that it sends out to report on various food conventions and events.
Where iFood.tv shines is their social networking features, which are very well developed compared to the competition. Every member of the site gets a MySpace-style profile (sans the customization) that includes biographical info, a guest book, links to recipes (and favorite recipes), videos, blogs, groups, buddies, and “tastemates.” Tastemates is a feature unique to iFood.tv that attempts to match users based on their taste in recipes.
Each recipe page also includes rating, commenting, and fans (those user who marked the recipe as a favorite) to round out the social features.
The site was launched about 11 months ago, and according to Compete it has experienced a large amount of growth over the past couple of months. Khan told me that the site was currently stretching the limits of their servers and that they are planning to scale up their infrastructure.
Embedded is below is a video recipe from iFood.tv member LizzieMarieCuisine, who I’m expecting to see on “Food Network” when she’s older. iFood.tv also lets users embed pictures from non-video recipes.
