MySpace for Foodies: Eats.com?

By JULIETTE ROSSANT Are you a member of MySpace, Facebook, and Linkedin yet still want to reach out to your foodie friends in cyberspace? Eats.com, the foodie social network, wants you. Eats.com, launched on April 1, is a restaurant search engine created by the publishers of Eats magazines (Eats Media Group), combined with articles and menus. The founders claim that this is the first website to invite users to create an Eater Profile, allowing them to interact with foodies across the country. The idea is that you connected with other foodies by uploading photos, blogging, writing and reading reviews about restaurants you like or don't like. Is Eats.com a way to undermine the power of newspaper restaurant reviewers? Perhaps. Eats.com told Super Chef that soon the profile page will feature a "wall" which will act like a personal blog. Members will be able to comment on anything, especially reviews from other sources. That means chefs can comment on reviews and reach out to customers with specials and information about what they are doing – as long as they can get their customers to log on. Is Eats.com a threat to Zagat? Eats.com says that they offer more traditional features like searches, basic restaurant information, and Google maps. There are tag features that allow users to search by name, neighborhoods, cuisine and ratings . Users can also search by restaurant feature tags including brunch scene, cheap eats, date place, family oriented, hip bar, etc. It is too early to tell whether Eats.com will lure young people to post and use it as a social space – like MySpace has done so successfully. Eats.com has relationships with many college administrations where the offline publication (Eats Magazine) is distributed by the school to their students. Eats also plans to have presence on every campus through students who work for Eats while in school. Meanwhile, Eats Magazine says it is flourishing and considering expansion to Philadelphia, Chicago, Boston, and Las Vegas. Technorati Tags: superchefblog, Juliette Rossant, super chef, celebrities, chefs, food, restaurants, cooking, branding, cuisine, blogging, food blogging --> back to Super Chef