From cooking to cleaning, organizing your life can be tough. But what if you had all those to-do lists made for you – and by professionals, no less? Boston startup Springpad announced Thursday the debut of its new Notebook Store, a resource of digital "notebooks" designed by experts to help users do just that.
The Web and mobile personal organization app, which has over five million users, has partnered with more than 50 brands and influencers to create these prettily packaged, all-in-one content collections. Cooking & Food, Home & Living, Family & Parenting, Tasks & Productivity and Travel are the main categories into which the new products are shuffled.
Springpad’s Notebook Store is a hybrid between Apple’s App Store and Pinterest, if the majority of the apps and pins were sponsored content. Take, for example, a notebook created by Breville, called Juicing 101. Users can then access a mix of different content, from smoothie recipes to grocery lists to suggested juicers, created by the company, to purchase. What’s more, when a brand adds a new element to its notebooks, consumers are pinged.
“It’s branded content, but Springpad is delivering it to you in a way that is actually useful and helpful,” explained Co-founder Jeff Janer. “The whole idea is how can we help people do projects and tasks they can start instantly, and add in expertise from an expert.”
Thought leaders and influencers within various fields, such as personal organization and home design, also have notebooks available with Springpad. Popular bloggers and other personalities can create notebooks to further engage with their readership and user following.
“What we’re finding from these influencers is that these [notebooks] are great tools for them, as well,” said Janer. “This gives them a way to keep in touch with people, and add value to them on their mobile devices.”
For the time being, all of Springpad’s notebooks are free. But in the next 30 to 60 days, noted Janer, the company will begin to charge around $1.99 a pop.
Back in December around the holiday season, Springpad first dabbled in offering notebooks for party planning and gift shopping; the company saw promising results, with 225,000 notebooks downloaded in the month alone. In January and February, Springpad added more to keep up the momentum, and saw 450,000 and 400,000 downloads, respectively.
While users will still be able to create their own customized Springpad notebooks, this new initiative marks a significant switch in focus for the company. Springpad hopes to add more categories, such as Health & Fitness and Spring Cleaning in the coming months, added Janer. The company also, like the App Store, plans to introduce user-generated notebook ratings.
Image via Springpad
