Foodgeeks gets more social about geeking out over recipes

[HTML2]Many of you know Ryan Snyder as one of the folks behind Shizzow, the Portland-based location-sharing app. But what you may not know is that before Shizzow—way, way before, in fact—he was the guy behind Foodgeeks, a popular site designed to help folks share, rate, and generally geek out about recipes and food.

And while the site had been running of its own volition, a recent mishap inspired Ryan to begin redesigning and restructuring the site. Today, that work resulted in the launch of a brand new Foodgeeks.

Now, I realize that Foodgeeks may be a new thing to you. But it’s been around for a long time. A long, long time. Like it may be older than some of you. Like since December of 1998.

So what’s it take to bring a social but still fairly dotcom site up to today’s social Web standards? It’s safe to say that takes a lot of rethinking and then a lot of tweaking. And probably introducing some new features, to boot.

“Even after 10 years, it’s a project that I’m still passionate about,” said Ryan. “It’s cool to see that it still has a place, today.”

But where to begin? Well, having the site crash is always a helpful motivator.

35 days after the big crash, and with the gracious help of Crystal Beasely and her amazing design talents, Foodgeeks has been rebranded and relaunched in time for Thanksgiving. Foodgeeks includes most of its original features, as well as some new offerings, such as activity streams, badges, tags and the lovable Mr. Yummy. In my spare time, I’ll continue to crank out features for Foodgeeks, and will soon rebuild Winegeeks as well.

File it under “every cloud has a silver lining.”

It’s also worth noting that Nate DiNiro has been helping with the rebuild, adding video content to the site—and that content has really brought some of the recipes to life.

So, if geeking out about recipes with your fellow would-be chefs is of interest to you, head on over to Foodgeeks to peruse and rate the more than 10,000 recipes that have already been submitted by folks just like you. Or you could always start following Foodgeeks on Twitter.

Published by Rick Turoczy

More than mildly obsessed with the Portland startup community. Founder and editor at Silicon Florist. Cofounder and general manager at PIE. Follow me on Twitter: @turoczy View all posts by Rick Turoczy