Social to-do list Astrid launches on the iPhone

Google Ventures, AngelPad-backed startup expands distribution to help you tackle your to-do list

San Francisco-based Astrid, which was incubated at AngelPad, announced Thursday that it's bringing its social to-do list application to the iPhone. To date, Astrid has been available on Android-based phones, making it difficult for consumers to share tasks with one another across devices. 

In addition to the iPhone launch, Astrid is adding a voice application so a person can just say tasks or to-do lists into the phone, rather than write them. The Astrid team is hoping the iPhone launch will help drive up their active user base to the one-million milestone.

Astrid, which received $500,000-plus in seed funding from Google Ventures in July, has already been downloaded 2.5 million times, about one million more times since we last spoke to the team three months ago. About 400,000 consumers remain active on the service, using Astrid at least once a month, said Jon Paris, one of Astrid co-founders, in an interview with me. Those numbers appear to be accelerating as 10,000 new users have joined the site daily over the past week, Jon added.

So, how do people use Astrid? People use Astrid mainly to create lists, such as grocery lists, packing lists, and what-to-read lists. A lot of the lists are also those that can be shared, like lists for food runs. For instance, if someone is running out to grab lunch for the office, they don't have to walk around with a notepad and grab everyone's order. Rather the list can be created by everyone inputting their order into the same list on Astrid.

You can also create a shared to-do list for a pot-luck gathering. The idea is that by being all connected on a list, each party can remind and encourage one another to get their to-do's done in a timely manner.

In order to get more distribution, Astrid is exploring deals with services that help people get jobs or tasks done. While Astrid isn't speaking to any company specifically, some of services that make sense to partner with include TaskRabbit, Elance, oDesk and Postmates.