Show HN: Address book storage you can trust. | Hacker News Reader

Show HN: Address book storage you can trust.

columns.co

22 pointstristanthomas40 comments

"Trust" is a big offer. There are 2 main trust issues when I give my contact information to another company: 1) Will they keep as private as I would? and 2) Will they still be around in 5 years?

Your model means that I can somewhat believe 1), but 2) means that I personally would not use such a service.

Hi casca,

I totally understand and have actually stopped signing up for startups without a clear business model (even YC ones). I hope that our model means that we will be and if for some reason we aren't, because we make your data fully portable and completely yours, it would be very easy for you to move. Please feel free to email me at hello@columns.co if you want to discuss this further.

Could you please elaborate on privacy and security features you use, on storing and transmitting the contacts.

> Your model means that I can somewhat believe 1)

What makes you believe that your data will be kept private? Is it the fact that they have paid memberships and they have something that looks a bit like a privacy policy on their landing page?

As for me, I'm not sure whether I want to use the word "trust" to describe my relationship with a company that offers "storage" in the "cloud" without any mention of, for example, encryption.

Trust is not something that you can naturally expect people to have toward a brand-new web service in this day and age. If you really want to use the precious T-word, you'd better do something that leaves any reasonable customer very little choice but to trust you. For example, solid encryption (preferably client-side) and easy exportability would minimize the risk of anything bad happening to my data even if you decided to sell yourself out to some evil corporation next year. If you already have such features, please put them on the landing page.

Not trying to bad-mouth your project in any way, just trying to point out some potentially worthwhile possibilities.

Hi Kijin,

We haven't put enough details about encryption on the landing page (because we didn't want to overload the page) but we will do very soon.

With regards to exportability, if you check out the feature in the bottom right (Full Ownership) you can see details about how easy it is to take your data elsewhere.

Hope that helps and thank you for your comments, really appreciate it.

> if you check out the feature in the bottom right (Full Ownership) you can see details about how easy it is to take your data elsewhere

There isn't a lot of details there. The sentence I quoted above is longer than the details in the "full ownership" box.

As a somewhat meta comment, it kind of blows my mind that it's possible today to market a product on the grounds that you, as a customer, pay for it. "Look! We're not free!" is actually something the customer is expected to understand the implications of, and appreciate as a feature.

I do understand the implications, I'm not looking for explanations, I just think it's quite ... funny.

Most people with brains understand the concept "You get what you pay for".

Complete lack of details there.

Does it support Thunderbird?

Does it support CardDav?

Will it sync with my existing Google contacts?

Hi Andrew,

Apologies for the lack of details - this is just our landing page and of course will be built out further.

In answer to your questions: yep, it supports Thunderbird. Yep, it supports CardDAV. In terms of syncing with your Google Contacts, I'm not 100% sure what you mean but you can import all of your Google Contacts and keep them synced up through Columns (if that's not what you meant please let me know!)

Hope that helps and thank you for your time.

iOS and WP8 both cannot pull in custom phone number fields from Google Contacts.

For example, some people I have a mobile number, but then I also have a "Google Voice" number with them. When pulling that contact in to my iPad, it loses the Google Voice number.

Does Columns keep the custom free text fields? I assume iOS and WP8 don't because they both pull in Google's contacts using Outlook.

Soocial is an existing service that does almost exactly this:

http://www.soocial.com/

Soocial is a contacts sync service. They have a free level and a paid "premium" level of service ($5/month). I use Soocial (paid service) and I really like it. There is a major problem with Soocial however: the company was acquired in November 2011 by the French company Viadeo (blog post: http://blog.soocial.com/2011/11/29/soocial-has-been-acquired...), and the future of the service is unclear. You can still sign up for Soocial (I did!), and it works great, but this is a major worry for me as a customer.

I want to describe my experience using Soocial, because I hope that Columns will include all of the great functionality that Soocial has. The most important feature for me is that Soocial syncs my contacts between two different Gmail accounts (home and work), with Soocial acting as the "main" contacts storage location. I use this feature to keep my home and work contacts separate, while my iPhone has access to ALL my contacts. Also Soocial allows me to sync contact groups to my iPhone, which is not possible just using the MS Exchange server provided by Gmail. This setup allows me to keep a contacts "archive". I have a bunch of contacts (friends from college who I don't contact any more, ex-girlfriends, etc.) that I do not want to have on my iPhone, but that I do want to keep for archival purposes. Soocial allows me to keep those contacts in a central place (the Soocial web app) where they are accessible, but they do not get in my way day-to-day. Actually, having now described all the great features of Soocial, I've come to realize that I really really REALLY like Soocial.

I sincerely hope that Columns is successful and that I can eventually switch from Soocial to Columns. I would much rather be using a service that is being actively developed than one that seems to be coasting.

Question for the Columns team: What is your level of personal commitment to continue this service? Is it your intention to continue Columns as a service "forever", or do you intend to build up a great service and get acquired by another company?

For me - not a pain point:

* I have backups - so my contacts are safe there

* I also already have multiple copies of my contacts (iPhone, Desktop, Google Apps, iCloud) without even really going out to get that

The USP for me - if there is one - isn't obvious or compelling.

I'd love to know what the advantages are over iCloud and Google Contacts, both of which sync all my contacts currently.

You guys could be in a good position to revolutionise this space by allowing me to manage my own contact information as it appears in other people's address books – so I can update my email address when I move jobs, update my phone number when I lose my iPhone etc. – and have this information automatically update in the address books of everyone I know. This, I would pay for.

I'm not sure there is demand for this given that most people value convenience over security

But these kinds of business models appeal to me personally though. Lately I've been wondering if "It's like X, minus the evil part" is a valid startup strategy. Reason is the whole Hacker News Cologne fiasco with Meetup.com.

Some examples:

Stripe is a less evil PayPal. (edit: I mixed up Parse & Stripe) App.net is a less evil Twitter. XYZ is a less evil Meetup

That's what we are hoping! Because we aren't trying to be a massive company that does everything but instead a small, sustainable business, even if we don't have MASS market appeal we will still have an appeal for people like us that will fund the business.

> Parse is a less evil PayPal.

Stripe? Square? not sure you mean Parse.

you're right, fixed

To easily get my contacts to sync with my phone, which is the primary reason I collect them at all, I still have to vouchsafe them to Apple or Google.

Somewhat tangential but related: I'm not familiar with data privacy regulation in the US, but under EU regulation most of the "trust" guarantees made by this startup would be legally mandatory.

Does anyone know: Under US law, would a company be legally allowed to sell personal data without my permission? Would it be allowed to retain my data against my express wish?

One thing we want to combat against as well as direct selling of data which as you note is normally illegal is the use of your data within the company for other purposes (Google comes up as an obvious choice in selling advertisements against the information in your personal email, contacts and documents).

If the company is bought by another company, then your data is now owned or managed by the new company. Hopefully it will be a company you trust.

I would remove a lot of this copy that is referring to 'business model' - that's a term that you want to use with your business partners and investors, but not with your customers. I understand why you are bringing it up - to illustrate your transparency and commitment to privacy, but you should really just say that. Also, "We want customers, not users." sounds equally as bad.

Thanks slap_shot. I guess what we are trying to do is explain to people like us (geeks) what we really mean by being sustainable and trusted. It annoys me when companies don't explain WHY they are something they claim to be.

I don't know, "We want customers, not users." immediately made sense to me but I think I'm part of the target market which seems to be people who are aware of what "free" services do with your data and have at least some concern about it.

The real question is if the target market is big enough to build a sustainable business.

I think their copy is doing them a disservice. It their most prominent, preeminent feature is that I have to give them my money to use their service, they ought to rethink their marketing strategy. Most people so not revel in giving away their money. There are better facets of the product to play up...

Hi ruswick,

There are lots of options for contacts storage for free, but we are aiming to provide a service for people who care about their data and who has it. There are many other great features of our product, but none as good (we think) as our commitment to your ownership of your data.

My contact list currently lives in Google Contacts. It is used by Google Calendar and my Android phone automatically, and by Thunderbird via Zindus.

Have you given thought to calendar integration?

Hi Eugenio,

Yep - your contacts can be easily transferred from Google Contacts and then used on your Android phone and in Thunderbird just the same.

Transferred, yes. Synchronised automatically to my calendar, apps, phone?

I think automatic synchronisation and periodic backup are two things you really should look into.

Sorry Eugenio, I obviously didn't make myself very clear or I'm misunderstanding your need. They are automatically synchronised with your Android phone and available in Calendars, Apps and the Phone. I bet you wouldn't even notice the difference from using Google Contacts.

With regards to backups, already done! We have full versioning so that you can roll back to anytime you want and backups are done continuously.

Cool, thanks. I'll sign up.

How could one possibly know what they would pay for the service if they only see one page with features and not even a demo? Listing benefits is also a good thing on a product page.

I like the idea. Ignore the haters, listen to the prospective customers.

Congrats on the launch :-)

Founder here - very excited to show HN and look forward to all comments and thoughts.

I get iCloud for free. Why would I pay you for this?

Hi sneak, A couple of reasons - by paying for the service you are a customer and your desires align with ours rather than us wanting to use your data to make money - we will never sell it. You fully own your data - no big companies with complicated privacy policies. And we are transparent about backups and security - http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2012/08/apple-amazon-mat-hona... - our versioned backups don't allow things like the above to happen and result in the complete loss of data.

Hope that helps, please let me know if you have any questions either on here or at hello@columns.co.

None of those things sell me. I have a local copy of my data on my Mac, and I pay for the service when I buy an iPhone every year. I fully own my data now.

i think you have mischaracterized the competition by accusing them of selling your contacts. so you have lost my trust right there.

also, the contrast between the text and bg is too low.

Hi spot,

I'm sorry you feel that way - can I point you towards my reply to anonymouz as an extension of what we mean by that. Also, please feel free to email me directly at hello@columns.co if you have further questions or concerns.

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