In our first of four ideas posts, Panos describes a Facebook-based cooking contest application.
The current situation – Why we build this?
Social networks have become an everyday activity in most people’s lives and many of them, are trying to find as much information as they can through social networks. Today in a social network like Facebook there are so many thinks to find that may interest you, by communicating with other users and share information with them. This is offered for academic reasons, social reasons, entertainment etc. It’s observed that many internet users are interested in cooking and this trend is followed also in social networks. A possible reason is that users in social networks have better interaction. So an application that has to do with food could attract a vast amount of users.
The solution
What we propose, is a Facebook application that allows users to share their recipes with their friends by posting photos of their food, and other users try to apply them for themselves. For example, with this application a person from UK could find new ideas from a person from China or from Italy and learn more about cooking not just by searching through web sites, but, by interacting with their friends.
Also this application gives us the opportunity for even more features that may attract more users. For instance, a cooking contest could take place. Users post their photos of their food and other users somehow vote for it by “like” or, with a number from 1 to 10 etc. Then we could have a winner of the week, of the month and finally of the year. If this application attracts many users, then at the end of the year we could organize a real cooking contest event let’s say with the best 20 contestants.
With this way we believe that many users will be interested in such idea not only for winning the contest, but just learn some new ideas and get help from other users.
The value to the users
Using such an application a user could have many benefits. Users that don’t know much about could join the application and learn easy from their friends and other users. Also users with more knowledge could go for the contest and compete with other experts. With this way, users may find more friends to share their ideas.
Similar Sites/Apps
There are many Sites and Facebook applications that have to do with cooking and recipes. None of them though seems to organize a contest. Some examples are shown below.
- http://www.cooking.com/ – a Website with lots of recipes.
- http://www.facebook.com/pages/Cooking/113970468613229?sk=info – a Facebook application that people post thinks that have to do with cooking.
- http://www.facebook.com/nealcenturyitalianfood – a Facebook application about Italian food.
- http://www.facebook.com/pages/I-love-Mexican-food-P/91366767902 a Facebook application about Mexican food.
Challenges and issues
- Is very hard to judge a food just by its look.
- Many similar applications already exist.
- Ethnical issues may be a problem.