When co-founder and CEO Mikael Berner first showed me his app EasilyDo last year, he pitched it as a tool for increasing productivity and “making life simpler.” The company is taking another step in that direction today with the launch of the EasilyDo Builder.
The initial version of the app provided users with a list of basic tasks (pulled from their Facebook accounts, iPhone contact lists, and other accounts that they’ve connected) that they can accomplish within a couple of taps — things like wishing friends a happy birthday on Facebook or merging duplicate contacts in their address book. Berner said EasilyDo has already performed 750,000 actions for its users.
With the new Builder, users can customize the app to perform certain tasks automatically. I didn’t get to see the Builder in action, but Berner and his co-founder Hetal Pandya said the structure is pretty simple — you identify a trigger, and then the task that you want the app to perform when that trigger occurs. For example, you could tell the app to post a birthday message any time one of your Facebook friends has a birthday. Or you could tell it to alert you when you have to leave for a meeting.
The task can either occur automatically, or the app can ask you for approval first. And the creation of “Do Its” occurs on the EasilyDo website, but they work on the iPhone app.
Since many of EasilyDo’s tasks occur in a social context, I wondered whether some people might see the automation as distasteful. For example, I might be a little peeved if I found out that my friend sent me a birthday message on Facebook without writing a word himself, or even knowing that it was my birthday. Ultimately, Berner and Pandya said that sort of thing will be up to the individual users.
Berner also predicted that EasilyDo will follow “a Wikipedia sort of model,” meaning that most users won’t create Do Its themselves. However, there’s a small group of power users that will, and they can share their tasks with other users. You could also follow specific task makers, allowing you to check out any new Do Its they create and add the ones that you like to your own account.
Berner and Pandya are hoping to extend the platform even further by allowing developers to build their own tasks using the same basic model. To jump start those efforts, they’re holding a hackathon in Redwood City on March 15 and 16.