KitchenBug Brings the Ultimate Social Recipe Application, 1000 invitations

medium_logo.jpgFood 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.

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KitchenBug could be described best as a social recipe application. It allows you to create, bookmark and share recipes in a very seamless way.

kbug2.jpgYou 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.