I never thought I’d type the following sentence: I’m excited about a webapp that manages tasks and projects.

Yep. I just wrote that.

I’ve seen a million web apps that do slick, fancy things, and have dismissed them with a jaded “meh.” But today I was introduced to something that manages day to day tasks and lists. And I loved it. It’s called springpad, and here’s why.

What’s a springpad?

So, here’s the short description:

“Springpads are free online notebooks that help you manage your life. Use your springpad to keep track of notes, photos, maps, to-do’s, contacts, appointments & more.”

As someone that makes lists of everything (seriously, I have a list on my refrigerator right now with the first item “Find Full Time Gig” followed by “Get Oil Change”) a web based application that can manage all the lists I make for completing tasks and can tie-in to other web APIs makes all the sense in the world. So let’s take a look:

That’s the springpad homepage. You’ll notice that they’re focused on holiday and seasonally themed notebooks right now like:

  • Weekly Meal Planner
  • Thanksgiving Menu Planner
  • Gift Planner
  • Trip Planner
  • Job Planner

There are dozens of possible springpads:

Here’s a video that explains how to use springpad:

What’s Different

On the surface, an online notebook isn’t all that sexy, but springpad has several underlying features that sets it apart from competitors that simply stop at creating a list-based application.

1. Bloggers as experts- To help users get started and to help them make lists, springpad is looking to bloggers as experts. For instance, let’s pretend for a second that I’m an expert chef (I said let’s pretend, ok??). If I have a blog with a great recipe, people might want to be able to import my recipe into a springpad. Right now, this is a manual process, but down the line, there will be automatic springpad integration in blogs. With one click, a springpad user can “spring it”, which will copy the recipe using standard microformats into a springpad.

Here’s what that will look like (currently available on thesimpleme):

Clicking “Spring The Task List” will copy the list and will redirect me to:

Then:

2. Traffic to Blogs- Again, if I were a subject matter expert, I’d love to get new traffic from springpad instead of just sending my traffic there. Well, they’ve got that. In its current incarnation, spring pad’s SpringAdvice is a site that scours the internet for smes (subject matter experts), and links to their content:

Of course, this is a win-win. Bloggers are able to get new traffic and are seen as experts in a topic, and springpad users are able to easily import lists. And springpartners (the company behind springpad) is able to increase their visibility by having multiple links to the service from blogs across the web.

One of the other things I like about the springpartners strategy is their focus on end users. While most web notebooks are focused on the technology and turn to early adopters for user acquisition, springpartners has made the decision to go after specific user groups. Because there are so many uses for springpads, the company is able to target usergroups based on the problems they’re solving. For instance, there’s a springpad for Pregnancy Health Notes and Nursery Planning. This allows springpartners to approach bloggers writing about pregnancy, helping them reach out to expectant moms looking to organize information in one place. In addition, springpartners can approach mainstream media sources on a topic-level basis. It’s a great strategy.

The best part of springpartners in my opinion is that they’re actually solving a problem that people have, and their solution is based on an approach everyone is familiar with: making lists.

Keep an eye on this one, as there’s a lot still to come. They just opened their beta, but in the coming months, you’ll really start to see how the list-making component can play with existing APIs. Sure, it integrates with Yelp and Google Maps now, but with the APIs now available, you’ll see topic-level integration with relevant web services. Write a shopping list? Maybe it can integrate with an API that will look at the items on your list and give discounts or price comparisons. The opportunities here are massive.