YC startup Xobni launches beta at TechCrunch 40 | Hacker News Reader

YC startup Xobni launches beta at TechCrunch 40

xobni.com

39 pointsjey48 comments

I have been running it all day today and want to share my experience and thoughts.

First, our company is about 60 people. And every person I click on is "connected" to everybody, I suppose simply because at some point he or she emailed to the entire company. That makes the entire panel kind of useless.

Same happens to "Previous Conversations with Joe" panel: it contains a bunch of emails most of them I did not even read, because they were announcements and both of us happened to be on the list.

This is a general problem a lot of corporate email users face: we get tons of shit. You are tired of reading it all, because most of the time it is not relevant to you. Stupid announcements about stupid meetings, garage parking crap, financial results and what not. I only want to focus emails that were sent to me or maybe to me plus 1-3 other people. Everything else (well... in my case) is considered to be noise.

Good feedback. We do sort the connected people by how connected we think they are. We're also exploring more advanced ways to rank connections, as well as bringing you the conversations you actually care about.

Please keep in touch with us and let us know what else you need! We made our platform just to develop the stuff you are asking for. As our first beta stabilizes we will be integrating more features and improvements (especially w.r.t. culling the cruft).

This beta is really just the first step in our mission, to get feedback on something that is in the hands of real users.

Sure will do. By the way I should have mentioned things I loved :-) "Previous conversations" panel is very useful even though it has a bit too much noise in it. Connected people started to make sense a bit later (because of your sorting) - all hardware guys are at the bottom of that list: the top 10 are software/HR people. HR got there because of the company-wide announcements, I suppose.

"Previously attached documents" panel is priceless. And, finally, your search is the bomb: just don't over complicate it later on.

Thanks Xobni. I always felt outlook was broken. I hated using it. The search is terrible and finding email address and phone numbers is a pain. Being that I am forced to use outlook at work, I was really excited to try out Xobni. I installed it as soon as I could download it.

I found the search amazing and email address information was very helpful. For example phone numbers are easier to find now.

Though, the social features seem elaborate, unnecessary and bulky. I am not interested in that right now. Maybe I'll find it useful later on.

Overall, great product. fast, effective, and useful. Keep up the good work!

To shed some light on our strategy for Xobni Insight:

What we've really been working on is a general platform for aggregating communication data (and on your machine, not ours!). The current features you see in Xobni are just a few ideas implemented on top of our platform. We will do more.

We say it's beta for a reason (this is not going to be gmail-esque "it's always beta"), because we plan to add many fixes/features/platforms as we learn more about the needs of our (hopefully) growing user base. We really appreciate feedback, whether it is a problem report (support@xobni.com) or a new feature idea (beta@xobni.com).

Thanks for sticking with us everyone!

That is a really awesome looking product. I wonder why they built it as an Outlook extension though. With everyone's focus on web applications I'm interested to hear why they felt an outlook add-in was the way to go.

Outlook has a lot of unhappy users!

Their investors use Outlook... Xobni is solidly targeted at the enterprise.

Not all of their investors use Outlook :)

Alright then! Think it'll be a while until we get a Gmail version?

I believe they're headed in that direction -- the sooner, the better!

Hook up your GMail to Outlook :)

People already use Outlook, its an easy (read, frictionless) way of aquiring users. Since there is no ability to create a Gmail plugin any other web based solution would have required a behavior shift from what people are currently doing online. Outlook is definitely the prime target for reaching the enterprise market.

Good start..but IMHO it is a number of features away from being a must have..Somethings I would like to see:

1. Some of my friends email me with multiple addresses, there should be a way to merge them into one person

2. I should be able to click on a converstion and delete the entire thread

3. I should be able to sort my contacts by rank

I really like the scheduling thing..probably not hard to implement but very useful. Can I manually connect people?

Please don't take my views too seriously, afterall I have only used the product for 1 day.

I give Microsoft 1 year or until the next release of Outlook Professional. By that time they will either buy Xobni or copy the functionality.

On a related note, you can see Bill Gates as one of the contacts of the test guy in the video.

You may be overestimating their speed. MS has very long cycles. If the features aren't already being developed, then they are unlikely to appear for a long time. Meanwhile, Xobni will keep getting better.

wow! i looked at the demo for the first time and i can see nothing useful or interesting about xobni.

this project has raised millions in funding?

a plugin that adds some functions to outlook? this project is as doomed as a project can be.

next in line:

etirovaf : a browser plugin that lets you search your bookmarks

rabksat : a plugin that displays all your applications right on the desktop

nwodtuhs : the easy power-off button - power off as its meant to be

I can't even begin to explain how stupid you look by bashing something you obviously have not even tried to use.

Do you have any idea how much time an average Joe spends in front of Outlook? It is easily 2nd most popular (or should I say 'used'?) application after web browser.

"bashing something you obviously have not even tried"

Yeah, just like heroin, regular work and sex with old people.

Have you even tried bashing things you didnt try or did you just do, what you condemn?

There are a bunch of old people (relatively speaking) that would disagree with #3.

"Do you have any idea how much time an average Joe spends in front of Outlook?"

I'll second this, and could provide some hard data if I cared to run the reports.

At RescueTime (my startup-- a tool for measuring exactly how you spend your computer time), communication tools (Outlook/webmail and IM) ALWAYS rank in the top 2 or 3 apps.

If Xobni can demonstrably reduce the amount of time required to effectively use Outlook (or email in general) by 15 minutes per day, what do you think that's worth to a company with 10,000 information workers?

You joke, but there could be startups there. None of those features are done perfectly yet. If a startup could do one of those things amazingly well, they'd possibly find a good business in there too. Bookmarks in particular is a rich area.

I used Outlook a lot in various companies and definitely this is very useful.

Etirovaf has come up now as a YC funded startup:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=104772

What you're doing seems to make sense. If this becomes popular, microsoft could conceivably buy it.

I've just been using it for a bit, and there's one thing I find disconcerting. Let's say I click on "Joe Blow", and then I see "Conversations with Joe (150)". Okay, so I look at these "conversations"...now, maybe other companies are different, but as soon as you get more than a few people in an office, the bulk of the emails have 20 people in the To: [] section. Thus, if Jane Doe sends 20 people an email, among whom was me and Joe Blow, then all of a sudden there's a "Conversation" between me and Joe.

Not the case.

Because of that, the tool seems to add quite a bit of noise. Maybe make an option for "Types of conversation", "From Joe to me", and "From Me to Joe".

Xobni beta users - if Xobni makes you happy, please help us out by voting all 5's at http://www.techcrunch40.com/2007/presenter.php?presenter=27

We really appreciate your support

Xobni guys, I have been very curious about what you were doing.

I just installed it at work. Awesome! My email (actually, Outlook) does suck less now. I can finally search! ... which I don't need to do much anymore since most of the stuff I need automatically shows on the right.

I hope you do well. I hate email so much that personally need you to stay alive to help me deal with it :-)

Here's a company that is building something users want, and has a better chance of making money from its users than all those web2.0 companies.

Enterprise might not be sexy, but is sure pays the bills!

I was a Xobni-skeptic but I'm not to proud to reverse my opinion. Things are looking up in Xobniville. Congratulations.

Why do email analytics matter? Why does it matter how many emails I sent/received from a given person?

It probably doesn't. What matters more is how you use email. I recommend GTD method (after personally trying half a dozen methods, GTD works the best). If you're on a Mac, try http://indev.ca/MailTags.html

Sometimes, automated analysis is weird in that it gets you see questions that you'd never have thought of otherwise.

I like that it seems to focus a lot on usability, ie giving people what they need most. I only wonder about the quote from the article: "a huge number of people who feel overwhelmed and frustrated by an ever expanding inbox". If that is the case, I wonder if technology is the right approach to solve it. Maybe if the Inbox is overflowing, something else is going wrong (messed up processes etc.). Especially if it is a trend that continues, even with tools like Xobni the information processing capabilities of the human brain can only scale so much.

Looks great!

So, would the Hollywood Pitch be: Gmail features for Outlook et al?

Pretty cool, guys. Any future plans for integration for Exchange? For example, if I click "Schedule time with (person)" and that person is inside my company, I might expect to have the Outlook "New Meeting Request" window open. The existing functionality is great for non-Exchange users, though.

I am one of the many forced to use outlook for work. However, everyone I've interacted with uses web Outlook, not the installed client, myself included. Am I right that Insight does not work on the web version?

If so I might actually consider installing Outlook on my laptop just to get it, which is saying something. I would much rather not have to guess which page Ivanov is in my entire past history of alphabetized-by-sender messages.

I don't get it personally. What problem does it solve? How is it better than gmail? Why do I need it?

Listing "It extracts phone numbers" as a feature seemed to be scraping the barrel a bit to me. Gmail extracts loads of things. Heck it even recognizes parcel tracking numbers and provides a link to track them afaik.

Am I right in thinking it plugs into outlook express? eugh eugh and eugh.

I forgot to say desktop email is pretty much dead or soon will be. Who uses a desktop email client these days?

you will need to come out of silicon valley to get that answer - way more people (at least in the enterprise) use desktop email than web email ...

Saw the demo video (I don't use Outlook, so I can't try the beta). It looks pretty cool. I may yet end up eating my words...

i think it looks sweet. i was just thinking about how long it will be until they get bought...then i was thinking about who would buy them. anyone but microsoft? i'm guessing they will try to roll out for other email clients though? then who? interesting to think about...

Ok, I'm sold. Where do I get a referral code?

Looks like we have a winner. Best!

congrats guys! looking good.

When can I have the greasemonkey version? The thunderbird version?

What language is it written in?

looks like C# from their website

how do i get an invite code other than signing up for a waiting list ?

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