A little over a week ago, we launched the new Springpad – a redesign of our smart notebooks to simplify personal use and introduce new collaboration and sharing features.

While we’re thrilled with much of the feedback that we’ve gotten from new and existing users, this launch has not been without issues. Unfortunately, the launch had a bunch of bugs that impacted many of you. And more importantly, we didn’t properly set expectations for our most passionate users as to how drastic the changes would be.

Over the last week we’ve been working to remedy the bugs and implement usability improvements. You can find a recap on those issues here and here. We know that there’s still more work to do, and we’ll continue to post updates as we have them.

I wanted to take the time to outline our rationale for this …

The Springpad team has been working hard to implement some fixes for issues from our launch last week that have impacted our existing users. For an overview of issues and recent fixes, including the recent addition of a “compact notebook” option, please read my previous post.

We’re still processing feedback, but here’s where we are and the list of immediate fixes we’re implementing:

I want to give you an update specific to some of the issues we’ve encountered and the feedback you have given us since our launch on Wednesday. While we have received a ton of positive feedback from new and existing users on our redesign, we also have heard a lot of frustration from some of our most loyal users who have encountered bugs and were surprised by the new design.

Here is a status update on where we are and where we’re headed.

Yesterday was launch day!  We announced the new Springpad, had a bunch of press, and attracted quite a few new users. But, there’s one thing we forgot to tell you: We made the new Springpad for you, our passionate existing users!

Let me tell you a bit about some of the new features and how they’re just for you!
Watch the video or just read on…

Collaboration
Over the past few years, collaboration has been the most-requested feature from you guys, hands down! You’ve asked to privately share your notebooks with your friends, family and co-workers. And you’ve wanted privacy and collaboration controls at the notebook-level. Well, we’ve done it. We truly believe that Springpad notebooks are the very best way to create (and now share) sets of data and have them accessible on the web and on your mobile devices. And of course …

Six months ago, the team took a deep breath and began to plan for the next major Springpad release. We studied our learnings and feedback from more than 30 point releases across 3 platforms and 3 million registered users. We reflected on our vision of the ‘Smart Notebook’ – a digital, cloud based platform that not only makes your ideas and information universally accessible, but also takes advantage of connected data to work on your behalf to simplify your life – and got excited by the possibilities of making Springpad even more useful if we helped connect you with the ideas and information from the people you trust.

Today, we’re thrilled to launch the new Springpad – beautifully simple notebooks to share and discover with those you trust, with the smarts to help you get things done.

You may have heard that something new is coming with Springpad, and I’m here to tell you that it’s true! We’ve been hard a work on something big, new and exciting. So, whether you use Springpad on the web, iPhone, iPad or Android, you’ll see an all new Springpad very soon!

So, what’s coming and when?

Well, I can’t tell you exactly what’s included in the new Springpad. But, I will tell you that it will make Springpad both more fun AND more useful – You didn’t think that fun overlapped with useful, huh? Well, just wait… Vague enough for ya?

Check out the latest app built with the with the publicly-available Springpad API.

Developer Sven Ziegler has published an app for WebOS that allows you to access your Springpad data on your WebOS device. It’s called MeOrg!