Week 4 : Tastespotting - a community driven visual potluck

Food and social networking - who would think they'd go hand in hand?  They can.  And they do!  Tastespotting is a free food lovers' social network and caters for all levels of cooking ability.  The site was founded in January 2007 and is based on the idea that people eat first with their eyes. TasteSpotting is a huge collection of eye-catching food-related images that, when clicked on, lead users to the original blog post the recipe came from or posts created with the site itself.  You do have to register with the site to be able to browse the actual recipe.  Even if you're not a foodie, it's an interesting site.

A particularly interesting feature of TasteSpotting is that it also allows users to join and submit recipes, images and/or links.  The site's own editorial team checks any and all received submissions before approving them for the rest of the community to see.  It's all very fun, quite informal and visually stunning.  Be warned, don't visit this site without having eaten first, because then you spend the rest of the day feeling like you're starving ;)

Does this activity have anything to do with books?  Nope, not at all.  Does it have any benefit to our customers at all?  Very possibly not.  So what is its relevance?  This task serves as a gentle reminder that sometimes web 2.0 isn't always about work - sometimes it's just about having fun and exploring something unknown and different.

Discovery exercise:

• Visit TasteSpotting
• Register to join
• Explore the site
• Find one recipe/image that you think looks great
• Create a post and consider: What recipe did you choose?  Why this particular recipe?  Is this site easy to use?  Would you ever use it again?  What did you think of this task?  Would you prefer that all web 2.0 activities relate directly to libraries and our customers?  What did you, personally, get out of TasteSpotting?

Your progress so far:
4 tasks down and 2 to go :-)

Where to now?
Week 5 : SlideShare - online presentations