It's CHOW Time for CNET

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Food lovers now have a new site to call home. CNET Networks (Nasdaq: CNET) launched CHOW.com in beta form earlier this month, the culmination of its April acquisitions of the community-driven Chowhound.com site and the editorial staff of CHOW Magazine.

This isn't the first time that CNET has acquired smaller pieces to cash in on one of the many valuable domains in its rich dot-com portfolio. It scooped up TVtome.com in order to flesh out TV.com last year. This won't be the last time, either, as its recently purchased UrbanBaby.com parenting site will eventually be the growth catalyst for Kids.com.

Whether you're an active kitchen participant looking to spice up old recipes or a passive spectator with an empty belly that is looking to be fed, CHOW is looking to appeal to both sides of fine dining. CHOW.com itself is loaded with home-entertaining culinary feats that would do Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia (NYSE: MSO) proud, while Chowhound.com continues to serve up lively chatter on the best local eateries.

These are markets that have been well served individually. Recipe sites are everywhere. On the restaurant side, Time Warner's (NYSE: TWX) AOL Cityguide and IAC/InterActiveCorp.'s (Nasdaq: IACI) Citysearch already do a good job of providing editorial content with limited reader feedback. Combining the two makes CHOW unique, even if the two camps never find themselves breaking bread at the same table.

For CNET, the Chowhound development is what intrigues me the most here. The company has been able to keep the community of eatery buffs and oenophiles intact while updating the site to have a more modern look and more intuitive navigation than the original. The beauty of Chowhound is that it has lively discussions taking place covering metropolitan areas, and that is going to be sticky-sweet for the online advertising market, which is going gaga over local search.

For CNET, the new site will add to its growing Internet empire, which already includes video-gaming hub Gamespot.com, tech-news resource News.com, and photo-sharing site Webshots.com. Each CNET site attracts an entirely different audience, one would think, yet there's a marketing advantage to consolidating popular content sites under the same roof.

For CNET, you can never have too many chefs in the kitchen.

CNET is an active recommendation in theRule Breakersgrowth stock newsletter service. Time Warner has been singled out toStock Advisorreaders.

Longtime Fool contributor Rick Munarriz is a fan of CNET, but he does not own shares in any of the companies mentioned in this story. He is a frequent editorial contributor of restaurant and venue reviews for Citysearch. He is also part of theRule Breakersnewsletter research team, seeking out tomorrow's ultimate growth stocks a day early.The Fool has a disclosure policy.