Food Meets Tech ? Foodily: An Aggregated Facebook for Foodies

[This is the fourth article in a series on recipe aggregators. Recipe aggregators are websites or apps that compile recipes from various sources to make it easier for users to find exactly what they want.]

Simply put, Foodily is Facebook for recipes. You ?friend? people you know, chefs, celebrities, and food experts, then you get a daily feed of recipes and photos from your Foodily friends. You can comment on those recipes (or any others), or share them via email or Facebook. There?s also a Faves features that allows you to keep track of the recipes you like.

Whereas other recipe aggregators emphasize the visual (Punchfork) or their versatile search features (Google Recipe Search), Foodily emphasizes the social aspect of cooking and eating. According to their website, ?Foodily goes beyond sharing or saving recipes by including your friends in those everyday conversations about what to cook and eat?. Still sounds a lot like Facebook for Foodies, right?

Yet one of Foodily?s primary differences is that you have an aggregator working as your quality-control liaison. When a friend posts to Facebook, you never know what you?ll get. Similarly, food blogs and mainstream food websites often use very different recipe formats and may or may not include information you consider relevant (nutritional information, for example). Foodily provides its users with a standard format and even includes nutritional information and photos for all recipes.

Available as a website, Facebook app, or iPhone app,?Foodily works similarly to other recipe aggregators in that it culls the Internet for the best recipes from hundreds of mainstream food sites and independent food blogs. In addition to browsing your feed, you can also search Foodily by keyword or category (recipe, ingredients, course, publication, or individual/company). Its search functionality allows you to combine search categories to narrow your search further. Of your results, each recipe?s Foodily page includes its ingredients, cook time (if provided), popularity (number of Foodily faves), and nutritional information.

Foodily recently launched its Tastemaker Team, which includes famous chefs, cookbook authors, and health experts whose recommendations on food and drink can be followed for recipe inspiration. Each of the Tastemakers was selected to help direct the diverse tastes of Foodily users and has a specialty, such as simple family recipes, meals for entertaining friends, or weight-loss meals. You can follow the Naptime Chef for great recipes for those who are short on time, Food Republic for men interested in modern recipes and cooking trends, or any of 17 other Tastemakers.

Another innovation this year is Foodily?s incorporation into Facebook?s Timeline. By connecting your Foodily and Facebook accounts, your Foodily activity will appear in your timeline. You can fave your Foodily recipes, post photos of dishes, or say you?ve made a Foodily dish.

I?ve been using Foodily?s website and iPhone app for a couple of months now. The feed is a nice feature when I?m looking for new recipes without exactly knowing what I want to find. The ideal Foodily user is probably someone who uses Facebook more than I do, though that?s not to say that I haven?t found some great recipes on there (I have). I just don?t think I?m using it to its full potential.

If you?re using Foodily, what has your experience been? ?Any favorite users or recipes to recommend?

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