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Yahoo Branches off into the Food Business

Always looking to fill a niche in the internet market, the web media giant, Yahoo is going into the food business to develop an umbrella site of recipe, advice and kitchen tools, to name just a few. Yahoo has recognized that very few big independent media players have tackled the food industry, although it has acknowledged that there are some excellent food reference sites such as the Food Network and Betty Crocker.com.

The new Yahoo site will initially operate to serve the United States market, however future plans involve branching out into the British, Canadian and Australian markets. Deanna Brown, General Manager of Yahoo Lifestyles, said that the new venture was a natural extension of Yahoo?s media business and opened a lot of doors for potential new advertisers. Yahoo Food will partner will well-known media companies such as Martha Stewart, Epicurious, Cooks Illustrated, Taste of Home and Reader?s Digest.

Using Yahoo?s successful search features, food fundies will be able to access searchable recipe databases that will be indexed through a partnership with allrecipes.com. In this way, recipes can be found based on ingredients, regions or simple mealtimes. Surfers can also choose among personalized features such as reminders regarding prior searches. Yahoo hopes that its new food venture will be as successful as its newly launches Yahoo Tech site which has attracted 2.5-million regular monthly users.