It could not have gone any better. Monday we watched as the zaps started coming in. It was good fun to see what people were creating! We watched the beauty of zapd come to life as our users started sharing zaps of their vacations, families, new retail products, sleeping coworkers, artwork – their lunch, their headphones, their silly faces. We loved a Japanese zap of “how to make a zap”.

Then Facebook shut us down. Our app was just beginning to run and suddenly it’s cut out at the knees! It was a critical moment, and we are so grateful to the Seattle tech community connecting us with the right people at Facebook to get us back online in a matter of hours. GeekWire published our story as a valuable lesson to iPhone app developers. Moral of the story: get to know someone on the inside if you’re going to hand them the keys to your front door. In the end, the GeekWire story about our snafu received far more attention than their writeup about our app, so we called it a win.

The press since Monday has been getting better and better. Cnet, Appolicious, Gizmodo – the list goes on. Friday, our app magically appeared on the App Store’s front page. Holy exciting, Batman.

Zapd went international as the tweets rolled in from Japan, China, Germany, Holland, Italy, Portugal and France. We’re in the top ten apps already for several countries around the world.

Our app is keeping its full five stars in the app store but it’s the feedback from users that drive this development. Every bug report. Every idea. Every compliment. We answer them all.

Help us change the face of content publishing. Try Zapd. Tell your friends. Give us your feedback. Let’s do something amazing together. Thank you from everyone on the Zapd team.

Kelly Smith
Founder & CEO
Zapd

Thanks Appolicious for the great review.

“We built it, they came, but Facebook pulled up the drawbridge.”

Maybe you tried to upload a zap this morning. Our growth has been so fast over the last 48 hours that Facebook has temporarily disabled zapd! Apparently adding a user every minute is too fast. We apologize for any frustrations this may have caused you. We are currently working with facebook to fix the issue.

We are alternately psyched and annoyed about this. But mostly psyched.

Zapd Creates Themed Websites Right From Your Phone

Many times, people ask us, “What can I use a zap for? Why do I need a new app to share photos when I can do that with facebook?”

Easy. The difference is presentation. A zap is a story. This weekend I went with a friend of mine to a Crawfish Boil - not your everyday occurance in Seattle. I Zapd it. I linked it to my facebook account. I sent it to a couple stalwart friends not on the facebook train. They love it. Why? Because my little story about my crazy friend eating pounds of tiny crustaceans is framed by a custom designed template complete with cute bird near the top. Who doesn’t love a cute little bird?

Love instagr.am? Zapd was made for you. Show off your artwork framed by ours.

Business owners will love the ability to zap. No more earmarking time to update the webpage – just snap a few photos of new merchandise, add a caption, tap tap tap on the old handheld and boom, done. Website updated. Reach out to potential customers using your facebook network AND professional graphic design.

Having a garage sale? Snap your items, tap a pricetag, zapd will do the rest.

Everyone loves a story. Think of Zapd as your ampitheater, your gilded stage. Online communication doesn’t have to strip down your message. Zap it and share today! Right now! In 60 seconds!

Ladies and Gentlemen,

We are very excited to announce that we are putting the final touches on Zapd. Its been a long process and we’ve put in a lot of work, but finally the finish line is in sight!

We are confident that Zapd will make its own unique mark on the world of mobile content publishing.  And taking into account who is involved…that makes this goal even more likely.

Zapd comes to you from the same talented folks that brought you Inkd and Imagekind…apparently our reputation precedes itself:

http://www.techflash.com/seattle/2011/02/salmi-hanauer-barton-others-back.html

We hope to bring to market a quality product and are committed to giving users the most hassle-free, easy to use mobile experience out there!  If all goes well, we are planning to formally launch Zapd on Monday. If you want to keep up with the latest Zapd happenings be sure to follow us on Twitter, and like us on Facebook.

See you Monday!

- The Zapd Team