Food Social Networking Sites

[clamchowda]

I can't make my mind up about all the social networking sites out there--I love the idea of being able to communicate about food but obviously I'm not going to join all of them. Off the top of my head, I can think of a bunch:

eats.com
foodbuzz.com
tastespace.com
menuism.com
bakespace.com
opensourcefood.com
grouprecipes.com

Do you guys think any sites are better than the others...not counting Chowhound, of course :)

[dolores]

clamchowda, how are the sites you listed relative to moderation? On a scale of 1-5, 5 being the worst. TIA.

[dariel]

I am a big user of opensourcefood.com and eats.com. Opensourcefood is great for finding recipes, in fact i used it last night to make dinner and the chicken i cooked came out great. It has been a nice alternative to cook books and some of the other online sources i have used. I signed up for eats.com at the encouragement of one of my friends. At 1st i didn't use it very often but the more i eat out ( at least once a day) the more i use it. The thing that i love the most about it is seeing who is eating where and what they thought about what they ate. The difference is opinions makes going out easier because you can also see what users have more similar tastes to yours. Eats is a going out to eat site compared to Opensourcefood being a cooking/recipe site. Since i started using both of these sites all the bases have been covered as to what, where and what time i going to eat. Also i have started to eat food i would have never thought of eating because of the diversity of the restaurants and recipes that you can find using them.

[pegleggedheart]

The majority of the time, I use Menuism. I can't say I've done a careful comparison of all of the sites out there, but I default to Menuism because it is interactive and when I write a review, I'm likely going to get a response from someone else in Chicago who has an opinion about what I've said. I don't feel like I'm talking to empty space.
I also like that most users take advantage of being able to review their food dish-by-dish; the reviews are just more specific and therefore helpful that way, I think. And the option of uploading accompanying pictures is pretty cool.

I also spend some time using the friending system they have and I like the cute features they've incorporated, like a gutcheck, where you can run down a list and see what your friends have been eating – sort of like Facebook's status updates, but it's all food. Like a kind of culinary voyeurism.

Plus, it's a site that's still growing, so there's that "big fish in a small pond" element that I kind of enjoy.

[puppymomma]

Wow. I went to menuism to check it out. I put in my closest city, Worcester, MA, and this is the most popular user is "love2stuffmyface," an enormously obese man sitting naked at his computer.

I don't know if I can go there again. Not if I have to see that everyday.

Meryl
http://inspiredbites.blogspot.com/