Spring Partners CEO and co-founder Jeff Janer has previously referred to his Charlestown, MA-based company’s service as the “anti-Facebook: a place to focus not on your social network but on yourself and all the tasks and information you have to manage.”
Today Spring is announcing that Springpad, its online notebook designed to function as a virtual personal assistant, is integrating with Facebook for a new social notebook feature on Springpad called Friends’ Stuff. It’s the first service to aggregate Facebook likes and check-ins in such a way, says Janer.
Janer says it doesn’t change anything about Springpad’s original mission, though. “The subtlety is this is still for personal benefit; this is ultimately taking all of that social data and making it useful for you,” he says.
Springpad organizes and saves favorites that users come across in areas from recipes to movies to travel destinations. Beyond that it allows users to do something with those bookmarks directly from its interface, like add a saved movie to a Netflix queue or book a restaurant through OpenTable. It also alerts users in real-time to things like price drops on their favorite products. (Springpad makes its money from these integrations, as the actual app is free to consumers). All the user data is stored in the cloud, so the virtual notebook information is accessible to users from the Web interface and mobile app.
So, the Friends’ Stuff feature is essentially another avenue for Springpad users to discover, save, and act on what they like. Janer says it pulls the important information out of a real-time news feed indicating a Facebook friend has checked into a restaurant or liked an electronic product, for example, and stores it for later for Springpad users to access when they need it.
“This is not just social for social sake,” he says. “It takes all those likes and uses them to help your wants.”
When users check out the Friends’ Stuff feature on their Springpad homepage, they’ll see lists of popular movies, music, restaurants, products, and more that have accrued a number of likes and check-ins across their social network. (You can see a demo here.)
When users access the feature on the Springpad mobile app, they can
