CATEGORIES
- WEB STARTUPS
- CONFERENCES
- WEB JOBS
- MICROSOFT
- INTERVIEWS
- VIDEO
- AMAZON
- ALL TOPICS
CONTRIBUTORS
Recipezaar Acquired by Scripps
Update: 7/23/2007 – appears RecipeZaar is now pointing to domain registrar landing page.
PaidContent is reporting that Scripps has acquired recipes portal Recipezaar. John Cook notes the price at ~$25 million. (update: I have received a company press release as well).
From the release, "We've been the dominant interactive player in the 'home' and 'food' categories for some time now. By focusing even more on the consumer and the online user experience – much in the way Recipezaar does – we believe we can broaden our reach and deepen our relationship with the consumer in these categories as well as other aspects of lifestyle,” said John Lansing, president of Scripps Networks. "This is a great first step toward our plan to rapidly expand our revenue base from interactive media.”
"We started Recipezaar as a couple of geeks in Seattle who love to cook, and more importantly, love to eat. Because we are technologists, our goal was to make it a lot easier to search for and to share recipes, taking the hassle out of cooking,” said Hakala. "It will be exciting to see how our technology platform can enhance the user experience not only for FoodNetwork.com, but for visitors to all of the online sites at Scripps Networks. Likewise, we know that the programming and content that will be available to Recipezaar users will be greatly enhanced.”
Started in 1999 as CookPoint, Recipezaar reported 2.3 million pageviews in June 2007.
Cooking and recipe sites have been hot since the beginning of the Internet. Next to the cat, they are still a hot content area. Allrecipes was acquired in 2006 for $66 million. It's interesting that in the Web 2.0/Social Media space, there are few recipe/food networks. Might be something to think about.
I am able to access the sight, but it is very slow and some icons aren’t coming up (plus the top of the screen that lets you clock on “My Cookbooks and stuff). I was able to access my account by clicking on the bottom of the page. I hope it will be available soon to everyone. I was always wary of putting recipes on a sight and not saving a hard copy. I will soon make hard copies of all my recipes.
I recently upgraded to a paid membership in Recipezaar and, like many others, visited daily, sometimes more than once. As of 5:15 PM EDT the site is still unavailable, and all I get is a “coming soon to Register” screen, replete with multiple unstoppable pop-ups that my pop-up blocker can’t get rid of. This is not a good transition at all.
It is unfortunate that there are no real avenues to contact (other than the ones I posted earlier which were NOT readily acessible). I would’ve preferred a more direct communication conduit – but none was available!
I went to Recipezaar’s site earlier today to renew my paid membership and access some recipes I’ve been working on prior to posting online–what a surprise to see the site is unavailable. And it was an even bigger surprise to see that no information is available about what to expect. What an unacceptable way to treat loyal paying members, free users, and new visitors! On top of the sale price, how much more could it have cost to have handled the ownership and website transitions smoothly? And are whatever effort and money being saved worth the loss of membership good will and trust? Adios, Recipezaar. Thank goodness I didn’t have time to renew last week. If I had a membership that was less than a year old that I had charged, I’d definitely dispute the prorated amount remaining with my credit card company.
From: http://www.lostremote.com/2007/07/19/scripps-buys-recipezaar/
"18. Marion Cook | July 23rd, 2007 at 12:16 pm
I called the number for register.com
was given an email address for Troy Hakala -
troy@recipezaar.com
and a phone humber (removed) not sure if they are good or not but I sent off an email
19. Chef Vseward | July 23rd, 2007 at 12:31 pm
Hello everyone, I am a member of Recipezaar also. Just thought I would pass on a message from Troy. There is no reason to panic, recipezaar will be up and running the same way in no time. Hang in there ~V
Troy Hakala
23 Jul 2007 11:13
Recipezaar Staff
Sorry, it’s a problem with Register.com and DNS. It’s fixed but will take some time for it to propagate around the world and to to be fixed for everyone. Scream if it’s not okay again in an hour."
***********
I imagine this is PST hence the time difference. I would love to have someone tell me why this heavily trafficked site didn't even make use of "site redirect" or even "site under construction" with a bit of info rather than this approach? Ohhh, it seems it is Register.com's errors/omissions. They were not forthright with this info when I called their number plastered on their junky pseudopage besmattered with popups!
A suggestion for getting your recipes was also mentioned on the aforementioned site -
Googling your zaarname & recipezaar to come up with your cached recipes is intrepid & resourceful but should be entirely unnecessary for PAID "PREMIUM MEMBERS".
Let's hope Recipezaar doesn't end up looking or acting at all like the Register.com junko site & that Troy doesn't change his telephone number anytime soon!
http://biz.yahoo.com/bw/070719/20070719005142.html?.v=1
Just found this press release… please note there is email contact info at the bottom. Please join me in contacting them. (At least so they know there are people wondering what the heck they’re doing.)
Add me to the *Not Happy* group (also a pd member). Does not bode well AT ALL to what may be around the corner for this site! Did numerous web searches, trying to figure out why the site disappeared, and this is the first I’ve stumbled on that has any info at all… (info?, ok, venting). Where are the Scripps people and why are they sitting on their thumbs?
As others have said, very upsetting to pay for something and then not be able to access all of our hard work and recipes we have stored on there. I am not happy about that. I also don’t like having a bunch of ads popping up all over the place. Is that what it will be like? where are our cookbooks? are we even getting them back or are they lost??
Nothing like a HUGE overreaction!
Great purchase for FoodNetwork — it’s a terrific site.
At BigOven.com, we completely agree that the area of social networking and food has a lot of opportunity, and that the “what are we going to make tonight” problem still hasn’t been well-solved by software or the Internet. Since 2001, we’ve been building out a pretty rich recipe swapping network, now with over 160,000 recipes. We’ve also got optional downloadable recipe software for the PC, with which you can organize your own favorites, post them to the shared archive, drag and drop to create grocery lists or meal plans, and more. You can even get RSS feeds to see what your friends are eating/rating/photographing, and even look up ways to use up what’s in your fridge. Check it out when you get a chance, at http://www.bigoven.com.
Neat beginning – as a paid “member” of the recipezaar “community”, I’m not liking this bobble at all. There have been issues with the site – growing pains – all in all a great place to go. Now the big change. Can’t even access the site. How’s about an email to paid “members” outlining the changes? Hmmmm…hope this doesn’t bode of things to come…
I’m hoping this problem with accessing Recipezaar is being worked on, as I want to access my recipes. As “buster’s friend” commented, there’s no way to e-mail them that I know of. Please let us know what’s going on!
This is the only sight I get on the internet for…I barely check my email, but always check out the ‘zaar. I had tons of my favorite recipes saved there and now poof…they seem to be gone. So much for dinner tonight. Why does something good always seem to change?
What the heck is going on????????????? Where is recipezaar and more importantly where are MY recipes.Recipes created and photographed by me and saved to my private cookbooks. This is not a good start at all for recipezaar who posted information about the sale on their site and assured us that little was going to change. At the very least they could have informed us the loyal customers that the site was going to be down for a while. This is a great inconvenience. I cater events and need access to my recipes. So that’s money down the drain for me. Also a large part of Recipezaar’s attraction is the warm and closeknit community of cooks around the world. Cutting off our ability to communicate to people who have become friends over a shared love of cooking is cruel. I have no way now of contacting my zaar friends and no way of contacting Zaar to find out what is happening. As a paying memeber of this site I expected better! Extremely pissed off.
I am a paid member too and all of a sudden poof….I cannot get on,
Recipezaar kept telling us there would be no change, having no access is a very very big change……what is going on????? Not a good start in customer service if you ask me…
Damn, finally find a web site i can enjoy and then people with money want MORE money and screw it the hell up.
I agree with buster’s friend–where is the real site? Where are our recipes? How long will the site be down? The new site appears to be nothing but a bunch of links to click on. A lot of us have paid for “premium” memberships–is this any way to treat paying customers?
What I’m currently seeing is a link-farm straight from their domain registration company – aka there is no website setup for the domain. It seems to me if there was going to be a website change, they really should have planned to make it seamless. I’m not a paying member, but still unhappy that it’s down, so I can’t imagine how the members feel. It’s a shame with all of that money being exchanged they couldn’t manage to keep the site up without interruption.