Snapguide brings its how-to guides to iPad

Since Snapguide’s iPhone app went live in March, it is up to about 1 million active users, who are uploading quick how-to guides on everything from how to clean your Keurig brewer to making salted caramel glaze to switching your iPhone to a prepaid AT&T subscription plan. In all, there are “tens of thousands” of quick how-to guides uploaded to the service so far. Having realized success on the iPhone, now Snapguide is now making the leap to the big screen. On Thursday, the iPad app will go live in the iOS App Store.

Snapguide iPadThe app has come a long way from creator Daniel Raffel’s initial inspiration to share a complicated sourdough bread recipe with a couple of his friends. The app has always been mobile first: the initial idea was to use the iPhone’s high-quality built-in camera to take a few snaps of the steps of your activity, then quickly tap in a few instructions, then upload to the site no matter where you happen to be. But now that the content is there, the team at Heavy Bits, which makes Snapguide, wants to broaden its user base — that’s where Apple’s iPad comes in.

“The iPhone is probably more nautral [for uploading guides], but for consumption, the iPad is a bit better,” Raffel told me. “For us, we want people to create content regardless of platform.”

Snapguide not only has been embraced by users, but Apple has heavily featured it in the App Store as well. Still, Raffel doesn’t want to be just an iOS app. He foresees an Android app someday, but also wants to be a resource for those on the web too. That’s where the big opportunities for expansion is going to come, he said.

“I’d love to see us in first couple Google results. To me, that’s what success ultimately starts to look like — when people on the internet are stumbling on our content when they’re trying to learn to do things,” Raffel said.

The way he envisions doing that is hooking up with a big brand or publisher to share content. He has nothing to share on that just yet, but it’s a good hint about what to expect next from the app. “You can imagine a large magazine or brand creating content on our platform and being promoted; being able to click and find out where to buy the supplies [in a guide] … we want to leverage a bunch of awesome content creators that have existing networks and brands to distribute their content here as well.”

 


GigaOM