<http://schema.org/articleBody>
"Guide Central is launching free iPhone and Android apps that let users browse how-to guides and tutorials on a wide range of topics, the startup announced today. Users can also create their own guides and share them with the community.\r\n\r\nWhile Guide Central's apps are new, its four creators aren't exactly newcomers, having\u00A0previously worked at Google, YouTube, Fullsix and mobile app development companies. According to Guide Central's CEO, Gaston Irigoyen, he first saw the opportunity to improve the DIY segment while working at YouTube:\r\n&amp;quot;On the one hand, there are thousands of talented creators around the world publishing useful guides in blogs and websites. On the other hand, every day millions of users search for how-to guides to solve daily problems. Yet they face difficulties to discover useful content and, even when they do so, they hardly ever engage with their creators,&amp;quot; he explains.\r\nThis is the problem that Guide Central hopes to tackle, by\u00A0building a global destination for DIY creators and consumers. At the same time, it\u00A0is also working on simplifying the content creation and discovery processes, while &amp;quot;making them more engaging and mobile centric,&amp;quot; Irigoyen says.\r\n\r\nIn practical terms, the guides you can find on Guide Central are very diverse, from food recipes and beauty tips to lifehacks and home repairs. It's worth noting that all guides are in English.\r\n\r\n\r\nAs you can see, Guide Central's apps are well designed, making them pleasant to use. They are also quite social - users have their profile and can follow their friends, whose content will be displayed in their live activity and friend feed. They can also share guides via Twitter, Facebook and email - each guide has its own URL, and can be viewed on mobile devices and computers alike. In addition, Guide Central is\u00A0also available as a\u00A0Facebook app.\r\n\r\n\r\nGuide Central also works as a community of its own, with gamified incentives to motivate users to create popular guides that their followers will like, favorite and share. To make the process easier, they can also upload or take pictures directly from their smartphone.\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\nAccording to Irigoyen, the best guides will be highlighted on the app's featured section on its main screen, which is manually curated. Automatic filters also let users sort guides by number of views to help discovery.\r\n\r\nOriginally from Argentina, Guide Central\u00A0received funding from Google executives and Buenos Aires-based accelerator\u00A0NXTP Labs, which is a member of the Global Accelerator Network (see our previous post).\u00A0More recently, the startup has joined\u00A0Polaris Ventures'\u00A0Dogpatch Labs, becoming a resident of its European base in Dublin.\r\n\r\n\u27A4 \u00A0Guide Central, via the App Store and Google Play\r\n\r\nDisclosure: This article contains an affiliate link. While we only ever write about products we think deserve to be on the pages of our site, The Next Web may earn a small commission if you click through and buy the product in question. For more information, please see our Terms of Service."^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://thenextweb.com/apps/2012/10/31/guide-central-launches-iphone-and-android-apps-to-reinvent-how-to-guides/>