Food and recipes are a big thing on the internet. If you were unfamiliar with that vertical just think of the manyrecipe directories (like Allrecipes), recipe finders (like RecipeMatcher), social networks (Like BakeSpace or OpenSourceFood), user created cook books, and even online video plateforms (CookShow, iFood or Rouxbe) not mentionning the hundreds of cooking blogs some of which attract thousands of readers everyday.
Israeli-based KitchenBug is opening today in private beta a complementary service that will delight all those interested in writing and sharing recipes.
KitchenBug could be described best as a social recipe application. It allows you to create, bookmark and share recipes in a very seamless way.
You can store all your recipes within the website by just adding the URL of a page or copy-pasting the text you wrote in your word processor. The interesting part is what is happening around this process, where the service generates a suggestion of tags for the recipe. The best part is when you write a recipe they automatically suggest ingredients and link them to Wikipedia for further reference. It is also interesting because it brings a sort of semantic structure to recipes which helps in better search and classification. However for now their search engine is would work better with an auto-suggest or advanced search feature for example . KitchenBug has all the usual social features for interacting and sharing content with your friends (rating, comments,…).
You could claim that some of those features are already available in some of the services mentionned above. Yes, maybe. But this all in one approach, the smart editing and the quality of execution brings some elements of uniqueness that will convince many.
KitchenBug is now in private beta, an “appetizer release” as they call it, but many features are on the way like a news feed of your friends’ activities, the possibility to add rich media content, a smart menu-creator, localization in different languages and of course widgets and external social apps. The company expect its service to be viral, which is something they will have to prove very quickly in order to reach some critical size. They also plan to contact online food communities/bloggers to use their service; i guess all the above startups are trying to do the same. But i think KitchenBug has a good service, possibly a better product than some of the startups mentionned above and that could help them win the race.
KitchenBug is based in Israel and has been self-funded so far. It has been created by Ofir Sahar who claims that this service was born out of passion and love for cooking. You can actually feel that on their blog and his own profile in KitchenBug.
The service is in private beta and will open in a few weeks to all but for now we have 1000 invitations for TechCrunch readers. Click here to get it. First arrived, first served.
is kitchenbug really a good name?
I mean… I hate the idea of bugs in the kitchen/near food…
Seems like an odd choice of names, but you never know how it’ll work out…in 3 years, we could realize that it was pure genius in naming the company KitchenBug.
Add http://www.grouprecipes.com to the list.
Group Recipes seems just like BakeSpace. Anybody care to do a compare/contrast?
Um, yeah if you think Bakespace is like Grouprecipes you need to get your head checked. Bakespace looks like it was made off one of those $99 social networks you buy on hotscripts.
Here is a comparison of all 3 food social networks:
http://siteanal....com/?metric=uv
Thanks for the eloquent compare/contrast.
Tristan, I hate that argument about bakespace. Every time someone brings them up, somebody comes on here and blasts them for purchasing a DIY social network kit, and not hand coding it like the blog readers say you should. You don’t like it, but I am willing to guess that you aren’t a middle-aged, stay-at-home mom, which is their target audience. If these “ready made” codesets for social networks were so shameful, then why did tech crunch devote time posting about them all :
http://www.tech...social-network/
also there is chowhound and recipezaar, both were recently acquired.
This is a hugely saturated vertical with most all the real players being a decade old. Allrecipes, epicurious, foodnetwork (and soon even marthastewart.com) have social networks built in.
I personally frequent chowhound for good local discussion. Grouprecipes looks to be pretty good though.
At the end of the day none of these little guys stand a chance.
”
Seems like an odd choice of names, but you never know how it’ll work out…in 3 years, we could realize that it was pure genius in naming the company KitchenBug.”
Don’t know about that one… website CONCEPTS can go from being questionable to genius, but a bad name doesn’t stop being a bad name..
I’m not saying I disagree with you. I wouldn’t have named it that.
And then there’s us weirdos who just throw a copy of WordPress on the web and use that as a recipe dump.
“This is a hugely saturated vertical with most all the real players being a decade old. Allrecipes, epicurious, foodnetwork (and soon even marthastewart.com) have social networks built in…”
I agree – this market is booming with content, but with nothing real that glues it all together. It is my feeling that these apps such as group-recipes and kitchen-bug are trying to fill this void somehow.
Has no one ever heard of getting the cooking bug? I thought it was common. Kitchenbug seems like a great name to me.
Signing up didn’t work for me, anyone else?
Here’s what I get after entering my info:
“The page you requested was not found.”
Hooray, it works in Internet Explorer, what a great site.
BigOven.com (http://www.bigoven.com) also allows anyone to post their recipes online, and has its own 1,000+ custom-written ingredient dictionary that is automatically hyperlinked when users post to the archive. In this way, you can drill down and get buying tips, storage tips, history, lore, etc. for the ingredients in your recipe.
We just released BigOven video, allowing users to post their own cooking shows to the Internet. Like Kitchenbug, BigOven lets you tag recipes, rate recipes, and post photos online. With over 60,000 registered users, it also probably deserves mention in the social networking-about-food category. Thanks!
There is also familyoven and many more…in general I feel TC biases Israeli companies, maybe it’s because there are not in SV.
http://www.kitc...643/1025359769/
I’ve added my first recipe! For years I’ve been waiting for a good distribution platform to share some recipes that have been passed down 9 generations in my family. I am hoping they will do some rev share on any ads they decide to include in the future.
Good idea, I’m gonna have the NtN’s add it to FaceBook!
(Nasal toned Nerds)
http://fakestev...er.blogspot.com
>> maybe it’s because there are not in SV
BigOven.com is based in Seattle
After reading all the post here I still like bakespace.com. It seems to have recipes that other sites don’t have and its easy to use. I like their news letters and how friendly everyone seems, like a community. Bakespace.com seems to know what foodies like. They have that new Tv show Pie Hole on ABC on their site and its cool that they have this hollywood connection. kitchen bug is a cute site and hope it does well but if I was to the pick the best site for recipes on the net bakespace.com would get my vote.
You guys should check out our winning application from Rails Rumble. It is called Tasty Planner. It offers grocery shopping list integration on top of favorite recipe saving, easy recipe input methods, and recipe ratings/comments.
We have a new version coming out that has a popularity ranking, better search, s3 picture integration, etc.
There’s more and more competition in this space. I think kitchenbug looks like a nice service, but it’s frustrating to see it get such a positive review when others in this space (including me) offer basically the same functionality. Technology for technology’s sake shouldn’t be applauded either – why does an amateur or professional cook need their recipe dotted with links explaining what a tomato or bell pepper is? Yes, the regex behind that must be somewhat impressive, but is it actually necessary?
I asked myself a lot of these questions in creating OSF – you can add functionality up to the eyeballs in these niche social networks, but at the end of the day is much of it actually needed? Sometimes the basics work very nicely.
Anyway I’m off to cook some sour grapes.
jimbo the only biais you will find on techcrunch is related to what we really want to write about and not the location of the company
Attn: duhmoment
I do not appreciate you trying to steal my peeled banana recipe.
Just because i beat you in the chili cook off in ‘89 does not mean you need to hold a grudge.
Well – it only took a very short time since we launched and received this great coverage on TechCrunch to max out our open 1,000 user invitation. We are overwhelmed with the response we’ve been having since, and are happy to welcome all of you new users to enjoy and experience KitchenBug. However, we are now closing our doors for a while, and will focus on working with our beta users for our grand opening.
We do, however, accept requests; if you wish to join, just leave your email address on our home page. We will send out invitation batches in a more controlled fashion, and we promise that every request will be answered. Here’s the link:
http://www.kitchenbug.com/
We’d like to thank all of you who have registered, and hope to see you use KitchenBug and share recipes. Also, we hope to get as much feedback as possible and use it for our next rollout.
Also, we’ll be adding more exciting features real soon, so stay tuned!
What a great use for a social networking site. Personally, I’m getting tired of the OpenFace/Facebook wars. ( http://www.inte...p;doc_id=137979 )