Update 8pm: Site appears up, loads slower than anything and is missing lots of images. See screenshot at the bottom of this post.

Last week we reported that Recipezaar was acquired by Scripps Networks for ~$25 million. The site claims 2.3 million pageviews and thousands of paying premium members in June 2007.

Early this morning I started to see a large increase in traffic from Google using the keyword "Recipezaar." Upon checking www.recipezaar.com, I am redirected to a Register.com landing/parked page. The domain status page shows a DNS change today to Register.com DNS servers.

Now the "where is the site" comments have started to appear on our initial acquisition post. Paying premium users appear very pissed off and rightly so. A couple comments stand out:

"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…"

"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."

So I ask? Where oh where did Recipezaar go? I have an email into the company for more details and if you have any details, send it in!

As of 8pm NYC time, this is what I see:

Find more stories about: acquisitions, Quick News, Recipezaar

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.

Find more stories about: acquisitions, Quick News, Recipezaar