Social bookmarking giant Pinterest has acquired recipe aggregator Punchfork, the startup announced Thursday. Neither Pinterest nor Punchfork will say how much money changed hands, but Punchfork will shut down and its founder and CEO Jeff Miller will join Pinterest's team. This is the first acquisition for Pinterest since launching in 2008.
Punchfork pulls recipes from popular food blogs like The Kitchn, The Pioneer Woman, and David Lebovitz, and lays them out in a Pinterest-inspired grid on its website and mobiles apps. Users can search for a specific recipe, like "mac and cheese," filter recipes based on dietary needs (gluten free, vegan), or just browse the top recipes.
Since launching in January 2011, the startup has spent its time searching for the most-shared recipes online by measuring Facebook Likes, Pinterest Pins, Stumbleupon views, and tweets. The Punchfork team has also been extremely active on Pinterest creating 26 food-related boards and several hundred recipe pins.
By 2012, Punchfork had caught the attention of Evernote, which came calling when it wanted to add a recipe search feature to its mobiles app Food. In December 2012, Evernote used Punchfork's API to include a recipe search engine in its updated ioses versions of Food.
Now Evernote will have to find another API. Pinterest plans to shut down Punchfork's website, API, and mobiles apps in the coming weeks. In a statement on the Punchfork website, Miller writes:
For Pinterest, that means Miller's attention will be completely focused on making Pinterest a better place to save and share recipes from the internet. For the Pinterest-using public, hopefully that means those over-the-top pretty pictures of food will actually come with a recipe.
