Choosing a social tool: Where to begin?

Firstly, like most things, a Google search was a quick and easy way to begin my research. I typed in 'online recipe books' and  'how to store recipes' and away I go. These searches came up with lots of very useful sites. A few helpful sites were those that provide a list of top 10 technologies or similar. I was able to get a brief description of some suitable social networking technologies from these. The options were endless, I never realised that there were so many available. Now to minimise it down to three technologies.

I also came across an article on the wall street journal during my search scanning the internet for information Chefs Solve a Modern Kitchen Crisis: Recipe Clutter by Alina Dizik. From here it gave me a link to some tools for online recipe sharing. 'The cloud for cooks'.