Serious Eats - seriouseats.com

I was wondering why they weren't updating the site since yesterday morning. I know some people have complained in the past about their images being posted without consent and incorrect/no attribution. I'm guessing they pissed off someone with deep pockets.

this is terrible! i loved that site!!! boo to whoever complained :(

oh no! Is there maybe a secret back entrance to their archives? How will I plan my dinners??

oh! thank god please do!

waaaaaaah-i miss tastespotting, too! i didn't realize how addicted i had become until there were no updates yesterday. boohoo to the complainers!!

I've had positive respopnse, so we are working on it right now. If you email me via the site I will mail directly when its up & running, hopefully within a couple of days...

Hello all,

I was saddened this morning when I clicked on my Tastespotting bookmark only to find that the site no longer exists. I began searching for answers and happened upon a blog post at "use real butter." I have posted this there as well.

First of all, I'd like to say that this world is filled with beauty in varied forms from music to paintings to food and so on. Human beings, as creatures who love to be admired, so often get caught up in receiving "credit" and "compensation" for the beauty they create and share instead of releasing it for the world to adore and emulate and moving on to the next creation.

When the World Wide Web was birthed into existence, our world became united in ways that were unfathomable. As a result, humanity can no longer tightly control the sharing of creative beauty, whether it be a song, a recipe, a photo, or an application. My question is this: If we believe in a Higher Power who created and sustains this world, why fret about freely sharing our manipulation of Glorious Creation?

Every time I watch the Discovery Channel or go to the Science section of CNN.com, I hear about the discover of yet another species which was previously unknown to mankind. This world is so vast, awesone and wondrously created, how can our meager offerings compare? We should strive to be more like our Creator---and there had to be a Creator of such a Divinely Designed World---and freely share with one another. What if we couldn't watch a sunset, pick a bunch of wildflowers for a loved one, pick wild berries for a summer pie, photograph a soaring eagle or catch a fish from woodland stream without having to ask permission and observing copyright laws?

The ties that bind us are those of our own creation. I believe that the concept behind Tastespotting was not self-serving. It was intended to be a place where foodies, food bloggers, and FOOD LOVERS worldwide could post, link, and SHARE a common bond. Now, for whatever reason, that has been taken away, and food blogging will suffer because is has once more become compartmentalized. For those who are unfamiliar with food blogging, it will be difficult to create a blogroll of the wonderful food blogs which were featured on Tastespotting.

May we all strive to find and appreciate Common Ground.

I am sad as well for tastespotting but like one of the previous people said there is "beauty everywhere". Maybe this will get us all outside more...ha ha!
I also noticed that someone else made a comment, to say they had a site, that they could send people to for food pictures. At first, I thought, "people are morning buddy, what are you doing, trying to push your site". But then I noticed that people where responding saying, "please, do help us". So just in case anyone needs a bit of food inspiration, we at Rouxbe (www.rouxbe.com), also work very hard to try and put out some "sexy food". I am not trying to sell ourselves, in your time of need. Really I am not! It's just in case you need a fix or some food in action.

Hope ya'll have a good day, don't be too sad....go outside and play! :-)

yes, I put up that post & we are working on it right now - I loved tastespotting & this was a back burner idea we were working on. I have been having lots of positve feedback. If you mail me I will let you know directly as soon as work has finished and it is up & running.

I never heard of tastespotting, and I am heartbroken about THAT

Sad to hear this. I used to serve as a volunteer moderator in the eGullet forums and we had plenty of complaints from members who were asked to delete or edit posts that used recipes or images that were not their own original content or were not the copyright holder of (eGullet is also stringent about "deep linking" - which ends up causing "bandwidth theft" from other sites"). But I always understood that the site was obligated to abide by the letter of the law or they could run up against a situation exactly like this - a law suit or the threat of one that could endanger their mission and their ability exist as a public resource.

RIP tastespotting

I loved Tastespotting and found it to be an invaluable site for my food blogging and recipe searching. I hope something else comes along to take its place because clearly there is a REAL NEED for a site like this.

I have it on very good authority that the issue has nothing to do with images or copyright.

@anitaepler, I have no idea what the legal issues were, but I was responding more to another poster who commented (paraphrasing) that people are too caught up in receiving compensation for the beauty they create and why fret about freely sharing..they should be releasing the art to the world and moving on to the next creation.

It is a lovely sentiment, but the truth is that the artists need to make a living just as much as anyone else. If they (or someone else) freely gives their art away, how are they going to pay the rent, buy groceries, or put clothes on their backs? Or are artists supposed to give away their art -- possibly the one thing they're good at -- and then go work as a checkout clerk to make enough money to pay the bills?

I've heard the same argument about doctors -- that they should be doctors because they are healers and they want to cure the sick, and they shouldn't do it for the money. All medical care should be free. Fine, but when the doctor goes to a restaurant, should the food be free and should the waitperson not expect a tip?

It's a capitalistic society. People work to make money. Artists who are good at their art make money from the art, and some of them make all of their money from their art. Taking that art and freely distributing it without the artist's permission is similar to going to a farmer's fields and picking all the crops and freely distributing them, because people have a right to eat. Sure, the farmer can grow more pretty crops, but that's not the point. If the farmer wanted to donate crops, he would. If he wants to sell his crops, he should. Artists who want to post their work on the web for free distribution can do so. But if they find that someone else has taken their work and distributed it, they have every right to get a little ticked off about it.

Again, I have no idea what Tastespotting's legal issues were, but it just bugs me when someone pronounces that "this" particular category of work should be done for free. Unless someone is willing to support all those people doing that particular work, that work is simply going to disappear if it doesn't generate income, because none of us are going to be able to live on public adoration. A little food and shelter is also required.

I'm off my soapbox. All done. Feeling better now, thanks.

@tastas...duh. I knew that. Kleenex, Xerox, elevator...wrong pompous speech on my part. I get a good huff going and my facts head off in wrong directions.

I wish we'd get something more, not just that note..

wunami and dbcurrie - I loved the posts each of you made above (whether the current issue with tastespotting is that particular issue or not). :)

If tastespotting is down it likely is primarily an issue to do with business with a capital B wrapped around a legal issue. If it proves profitable or useful for their owners to get it fixed, they will. Otherwise, they won't.

And in the ways of public relations and marketing, if it seems useful or profitable to those making the decisions about this to post further information about "why" they will - if not, they won't.

A site like that is not put together with a few mere moments of the day set aside for fun. Do they "produce" anything themselves? I think so. They don't produce the product they are offering or selling but they do produce the platform that allows that product to be distributed. And that's not nothing. They are producing a service.

Is that service "piggy-backing" on the work of others? Absolutely. But then so does any review of a restaurant or book, so does any TV show that takes working chefs and puts them on-screen to battle each other for the entertainment of the viewer . . . etc etc. In the real world there is often more profit to be made by piggybacking than by being the initial creator.

What a stockpile of great stuff they had, though. I hope they manage to sort things out and get back online. If not, someone else will - as recipes2share notes.

Thanks, caviarandcodfish!

@caviarandcodfish..........I never heard of Tastespotting until now, but your pics are wonderful. I love "Because Tastespotting Up and Went".

perhaps this has something to do with it:

http://deepdishdreams.blogspot.com/2008/01/tastespotting-stalker.html

I'm very bummed. I'm glad I saved links to a few dozen items I'd found there, but since I could search for old ones easily I didn't save as many as I should.

Taste spotting let me to multiple other food blogs which I now read on a semi-regular basis. Like many blogs do, it aggregated content from many other sites. If I found myself being lead to the other sites many times I'd start reading that site as well.

I'd read elsewhere of copyright issues, but have no direct knowledge. Since each image had very little commentary and linked to a page somewhere else it seems like many potential issues could have been solved if the submitters were limited to the linked sites' owners.

Many times I've picked up a cookbook or magazine after being enticed by a bit of food porn on the cover. Tastespotting did that over and over again each day leading me to new recipes or ingredients. It wasn't ad-heavy, so the main recipients of any ad revenue were the downstream sites. They're the ones losing out from my not being able to find them now.

I can't possibly believe that DocChuck's blatant trolling is the reason Tastespotting decided to shut down.

@SundayNiteDinner: Nice basic clone of Tastespotting there. It sounds like it's going to be a pain if it gets the amount of submissions that Tastespotting had.

Tastespotting was one of those rare sites that consistently inspired me. I always wanted them to add a clipping feature so that I could keep track of the things I wanted to make.

Last night I scraped all of the pages in the Google cache, downloaded all the photos, and have a working copy of the Tastespotting archive sitting on my comptuer. I'm going to hold off on distributing it until I know more about what happened, not wanting to run into copyright issues or anger the friendly NOTCOTers.

Oops, I failed to include the phrase "to moderate" in my last reply about foodgawker. As in "it's going to be a pain to moderate" since it seems that every entry needs to be approved.

We created a site similar to Tastespotting: www.recipemuncher.com

We did not want to create a copycat, so it's a bit different: instead of submiting pictures one by one you submit your blog and we automatically pull the pictures every time there is a new post.

The site is only 2 days old, but we'll work hard to make it a nice place to hang out ;)

I spent the weekend making my own tastespotting replacement since my wife and I pretty much can't live without it. I'm trying to expand upon the idea and have already added a few new features that tastespotting never had, like voting, comments and the ability to save your favorite posts. Hopefully it will get us through this dark time without tastespotting.

http://www.newtastings.com

If anyone has any ideas or features that they would have liked to have seen on tastespotting, please drop me a line and let me know.

@fotocusine: thanks for the input... though right now I'm not thinking I'll ever make mine that similar to tastespotting. I wouldn't be able to keep up with it! And I plan on rejected photos that I don't like, too, and maybe getting some dialouge going about what makes a good photo.

About the resizing, I'm going to nix it. Yesterday I thought I'd make all the photos as near to 500 px wide so it looks uniform and clean, but I check the site on a PC today and it looked crappy.

I do like food gawker a lot for its tastespottingness. Great job, Chuck!

Thanks for taking into account my concerns, both FP daily and gawker are looking good and even though I have asked my hubby if we could take up the void left behind when TS left ('would love to, but seriously, we don't have the time'), I am glad someone is. Just hoping it/they will be close to as good as TS was. :)

The site also mentions a new site they're working on: Liquorious in alpha, devoted to, you guessed it - drinks! This may tide some of you over for a bit.