Reader's Digest Buys Allrecipes.com

The Reader's Digest Association announced Friday it would acquire Allrecipes.com, a community-based Web site geared for home cooks, for $66 million.

The eight year-old Allrecipies.com averages 6 million unique monthly users, according to Reader's Digest Magazine. The site, which has 1.8 million registered users, serves as a food-centric online social network, enabling home cooks to share and discover recipes.

Allrecipes.com will become a portal for all the company's food-related Web properties -- including the Web sites of the magazines Taste of Home and Every Day with Rachael Ray -- while delivering multiple cross-promotional opportunities, according to Eric Schrier, the association's president and CEO.

"Our acquisition of Allrecipes.com will provide us with a valuable digital platform to further leverage our position as the country's leading food and cooking publisher," he said. "It will enable us to bring together online communities from the various RDA properties using the common platform of an industry-leading food and cooking affinity."

Reader's Digest Magazine said that it expects the sale to close by the end of its fiscal fourth quarter, June 30, 2006.