Chowhound.com closing March 28


 
Chris Allingham

Chris Allingham

Administrator
Staff member
www.chowhound.com

Chowhound - The Site for Food Nerds: Cooking Tips, Culinary How-To's, & More.

Chowhound is the site for food nerds - from expert chef tips to culinary how-to's, helpful ingredient lists, baking science, and more.
www.chowhound.com www.chowhound.com

I was never a user of Chowhound (founded in 1997, three years before this forum), but the news of their upcoming closure on March 28 is a reminder that some of us older discussion-forum-format sites are falling by the wayside as people have jumped ship to Facebook and Instagram over the years. Still, there's nothing like a forum for discussion, which I feel is sorely missing from FB or IG.

Were you a Chowhound fan back in the day? Any thoughts on them closing up shop?
 
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Was not a user of Chowhound, but most certainly agree with you on having a forum for discussion.
 
The primary problem I have with FB or IG is there's no archive, or its difficult to search an archive. But I'm not on FB, I use Mrs Dollars account, so it may be easier than I think it is.
 
I think people like that instant gratification of posting a picture and getting likes or comments on social media. But having real substantial discussion is near impossible. I much prefer forums, and I didn't even really know Chowhound existed as a forum. I've heard the name somewhere. There may be an age gap thing at play. I used to be a guild leader for a World of Warcraft raiding guild and we ran a guild forum for discussion and for raid signups. At some point in the early 2010's it became near impossible to get newer (and younger) recruits to use the forum. I think part of it related to changes in that game, but I think a lot of it was the rise of social media. I've since seen younger people leave Facebook, for instance and move on to the next thing, whatever that is.
 
Chris, not a user of FB or IG and I have only used or visited about half a dozen other sites and I just can't imagine anything better than what you have created here for us.
 
Big hater here of social network platforms. More than happy to bookmark a private forum's URL. And forum software is much better for organizing topics, subtopics, etc. Win win, as far as I'm concerned.
 
I just came from checking out CH. Sorry to see it go, but it still isn't as good as here. One of the things I saw was there "Cookbook of the Month". Pretty close to my game I started back in '06, but my game we used cookbooks we already had.
 
Chris Allingham said:
www.chowhound.com

Chowhound - The Site for Food Nerds: Cooking Tips, Culinary How-To's, & More.

Chowhound is the site for food nerds - from expert chef tips to culinary how-to's, helpful ingredient lists, baking science, and more.
www.chowhound.com www.chowhound.com

I was never a user of Chowhound (founded in 1997, three years before this forum), but the news of their upcoming closure on March 28 is a reminder that some of us older discussion-forum-format sites are falling by the wayside as people have jumped ship to Facebook and Instagram over the years. Still, there's nothing like a forum for discussion, which I feel is sorely missing from FB or IG.

Were you a Chowhound fan back in the day? Any thoughts on them closing up shop?
Click to expand...
Never used Chowhound, but agree with you 100%, FB, Instagram and most other social sites are frequented by people who either don't have a life or think they're geniuses. I used FB for a while to keep track of old friends but figured, if they don't want to be more personal, they aren't friends. BYW, thanks for keeping these forums oriented more to people than trends and politics.
 
Forum sites that survive are more specific than just cooking or recipes. Golf, automotive, photography, audio, this site, etc. The other thing is good moderating. It is a tough balance between allowing free discussion and having a free for all name calling site. Forums that continually go off the rails or are too tightly restricted that you are afraid to post will fail.
 
I would call most social sites "anti social" because you can hide behind a computer and yell at peeps and get away with it.
 
JSaus said:
Forum sites that survive are more specific than just cooking or recipes.
Click to expand...
You have to have enthusiasts both as users and as admins. Chris has a wonderful site, and I appreciate the work that he puts in.

As an example of site loss, there's a company called Vertical Scope that's buying up sites that cater to wheeled folks. I got a phone call from a VS staffer when I was taking care of a club's website & hosting, wanting to purchase the site to monetize it and run it for the club (this was a result of a low level DNS dig.) Told 'em that the site was not mine to sell, but I'd bring it to the board's attention. The BoD shot it down in short order. Fast forward a few years, when VS bought another website that I frequented. The claim was that the site would not change for paying members (eliminated ads primarily,) in less than 6 months, VS was changing the display formats/filters so that ads were completely inlined in the forum display. For me, that was enough. Talking to a friend of mine, VS has hammered down on a couple of websites that he frequented. VS was hemorrhaging users.

Tl;dr: these sites are really difficult to run over a long period of time.
 
I used chowhound, but not on a regular base. I had poor internet for an extended period. When that improved somewhat, I went back and didn't like the changes they made, so stopped using it.
I'll still be sad to see it go.
By the way, I don't use facebook and instagram...
 
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