Social networks and food communities are popping up all over. Gosh we love to eat this stuff. Here is an interesting overview of the main sites out there.

Visitors as of Jul.08 (source: compete.com – for what is worth)

The Leaders

allrecipes.com      7,020,056
epicurious.com         2,132,306
recipezaar.com         3,434,530

foodchannel.com      54,510
foodnetwork.com     8,009,381
myrecipes.com         1,868,396

The Challengers

bakespace.com          61,704
cookthink.com         28,320
opensourcefood.com     48,026

familyoven.com      109,947
grouprecipes.com     888,784
tastyplanner.com     11,809

Social networks are increasingly targeting women but the rise of niche networks is leading to fragmentation and specialization.

Visitors as of Jul.08

facebook.com      38,274,897
ivillage.com     3,348,684
kaboodle.com     3,231,274
cafemom.com      2,202,916
divinecaroline.com     867,456
mayasmom.com     48,593

Source: compete (take stats with a grain of salt)

Free Social network platform

Insoshi released free code to build social networks (built on top of Ruby on Rails instead of PHP). It’s not even the first Ruby on Rails project to go open source see Lovd By Less

Broadband Mechanics has always emphasized the openness of its PeopleAggregator platform, and even Ning, the most publicized DIY social networking company, will give you the underlying code if you request it.

Forrester presentation