Allrecipes: Feeding a need

A long-running community site gives lessons about user-generated content and social networking.

The Site

Allrecipes, part of the Reader’s Digest Association, lays claim to being the “world’s largest independent food site” and its biggest “community of home cooks”. Today’s home page highlights the Thanksgiving collection of menus, recipes, reviews and advice. The recipes and many of the tips are submitted by the site’s members, with individual accreditation clearly shown. Content provided in-house is labelled ‘By Allrecipes staff’.

Community membership is required to submit recipes and review/rate them, and to use other participatory features such as Post a Recipe Photo/ Favorite Foods List and Add a Personal Note. Membership is free and much of the content of the Members area, such as reviewer and cooks’ profiles, and latest reviews, photos and meals, can be viewed openly (by clicking on the ‘Learn more’ option in the sign-up panel on all pages).

The Takeaway

Allrecipes pre-dates the current fever over user-generated content and social networking, having been set up nine years ago as a recipe-sharing site. Its longevity and enduring popularity – 2 million members and 20 million annual visitors, according to its Newsroom – have some useful lessons for anyone contemplating ‘community’ strategies.

First, they work best where there is an identifiable demographic or community of interest – in this case ‘home cooks’ – with a natural appetite for sharing ideas. Then get the content and facilitation aligned with the community’s needs. In Allrecipes’ case this involves an element of organisational structuring and content input, adding clearly identified ‘expert’ advice which complements the member-generated material. And allow enough open access to convince visitors it’s worth their while to bookmark the site or become a participant.

First published on 23 November, 2006