(Update: CEO Matt Brezina tell us the response has been so strong that he’s closing open access and will make it invite-only this evening.)
Xobni Insight, a new email service that sits on top of your Outlook, launches today at Techcrunch40.
It’s extremely useful and we’ll make a bet now it will win the show here, after the two-day competition between 40 companies finishes (we’ve yet to see half the companies, but it blows away the competition so far. Update: Indeed, Mint, which presented later, has since edged out Xobni to win the prize). We’ve downloaded it, and are playing with it, and find it truly impressive.
We’ve covered the company before as it readied for launch (this link takes you there). It allows you to better organize, search, and navigate your email. It’s key feature is a sidebar in your inbox that shows you profiles of the people you’re corresponding with. It gives you an entire history of your correspondence with them, and much more. There’s a tour here: www.xobni.com/learnmore, and screenshots below. The sidebar profile gives you an overview a person’s email habits (for example, when they are most likely up and doing their most correspondence, according to past usage), their phone numbers, how they rank in terms of frequency of correspondence, past conversations (in threaded form), and files exchanged.
So what? Well, it gets better. Outlook drives me nuts, when I’m trying to find past correspondence on the fly, such as attachments I’ve sent people, or the name of someone’s assistant that I’ve forgotten. Xobni lets you search for someone, and their profile pops up in the sidebar, along with all that information. Xobni has it all sifts through incoming email automatically, lifting phone numbers from people from the signatures at the bottom of their email. You don’t have to do anything. You can replay to email right there, within the sidebar — instead of having to toggle back to the Outlook inbox. The constant toggling between Outlook calendar, inbox and the to-do list is a serious hassle, and Xobni removes all that. Xobni lets you look for stuff within the sidebar, and correspond with people from it — all without leaving the email you were originally working on.
There’s more. There’s an organize feature that lets you manage appointments within the sidebar profiles, manage to-do lists and “stay-in-touch” with close friends or contacts you haven’t emailed in a while. There’s an analytics portion too, showing your own email habits, by things like volume and time. The site says the product is only available by invite, however we downloaded it fine from the site just now. Try it out.
28 Comments
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payam@ultradns said:
finally someone launched something useful. I have been using Google Desktop to mainly search my email but this is neat. I am very very impressed. Good luck!
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Deva Hazarika said:
Matt,
Good to see a lot of buzz building around the multi-billion dollar problem of email and information overload. We’ve written a blog post about the space and Xobni here: http://blog.clearcontext.com/2007/09/welcoming-xobni.html
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Brandon said:
Great Tool. I love this……..Telling my whole team to install ASAP.
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Vergel Evans said:
I have to admit… the one failing grace of using Outlook might have been fixed with this. I’d been using MS Desktop Search… but with all these extra functions makes me want to give it a try.
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A. Smith said:
Sorry to be the contrarian here, but this is very similiar to Bloomba which Yahoo acquired some 3 to 4 years or so ago. Their (justified) goal of creating economic value where Outlook fell short never materialized though the founders had an exit. Not sure how Xobni will be any different, especially given Bloomba/Yahoo’s miss.
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Rex Dixon said:
Sounds very useful. I know the feeling since I am using Outlook again. I’ll have to give it a try.
Rex
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bryan said:
@asmith:
blooma = looksmart; i.e., search for outlook
xobni = email productivity AND search -
Brandon said:
Question: Great free tool. Is it a true business? How do they intend to monetize the application?
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Fred Brunner said:
Nice plug. What’s your in?
“The constant toggling between Outlook calendar, inbox and the to-do list is a serious hassle…”
So…hard…must…move hand…must click…so weary…
That was truly lame even in the context of VC lameness. I would love to see that on the Xobni pitch powerpoint, all of the heads in the room nodding sharply “yes…yes that is what has crippled the adoption of email and the penetration of Outlook - the lack of a sidebar with the guy’s picture! Valuation - at least $75M!!
It’s a slightly clever widget. if this blows away everything else at TechCrunch, God help the Valley.
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Matt Marshall said:
Fred, no in. I don’t know a single person working at this company. I found many of the TC40 companies quite weak in terms of innovation and real usefulness. When something like this comes up, it’s refreshing. Try using it and then tell me its not useful. Ok, maybe its only for power users. This will improve my productivity considerably, because of the amount of email I do — hours a day. I’ve also been bordering on repetitive stress injury, so help, even at the margins, counts. I’m using it.
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Joseph Hunkins said:
Matt it sure sounds more like this struck a personal chord with you than a killer company. Based on what little I have read about the 40 so far I’d think Mint, which is currently hard to access due to server load, will win.
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Eric Eldon said:
Well, I use Gmail — and living in the Valley is expensive — so I might have voted for Mint. But it does seem like a lot of Outlook users are impressed with Xobni. I could sure use Xobni for Gmail.
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Kelly Smith said:
I’ve been running this. While I agree that “better email” is a huge opportunity, I can tell you that this installation doesn’t really address that many serious issues. Seriously, there were many other ways to improve email. Do I really need to know what time of day I sent a mail? Or, how many mails I’ve “received” from a certain contact vs. how many I’ve “sent”. That’s not helpful or useful information. The concept is generally good but the features built into the initial version are mostly pointless. Anyone who actually installs and uses the app will be able to attest to that. Hopefully these guys will start to focus on more nagging issues associated with emails.
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Sanjay S said:
Matt, it seems like you’ve been caught up in the hype. At the end of a full day of using this add-on the biggest thought on my mind was “what were the VC’s thinking?”. The add-on is slick, error-free for a beta and very-very fast in all it’s features (including search). But, but VC investment for an Outlook add-on whose best feature is email-search? I guess being associated with Paul Graham has it’s perks.
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Sig said:
Yes, this is an interesting tool and it allows me to find relevant email trails very quickly. However, I have a lot of emails in my inbox and this add-on is really hindering the performance/speed of Outlook, so it is unlikely that I will continue to use it.
Matt, I have to disagree with you, I spent all day Monday at TC conference, mainly in the demo pit and out of the 50 companies in the bit, I found at least 5 that are very compelling and useful companies.
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i use it but need to get more practice. i just got outlook for now.
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