5 ms·

Announcing Clearbit Connect

75 points by uptown 11y ago

samlinkl 11y ago
Announcing Rapportive ... again.
gk1 11y ago
This will never be as useful as Rapportive without having LinkedIn as a data source. And since LinkedIn owns Rapportive and is probably not keen to share that data with a competitor, I don't see that happening any time soon.
- fblp 11y ago
  I have ran connect side by side with rapportive during the beta and have not noticed any data gaps. There are other sources of data beyond linkedin.
maxpupmax 11y ago
I'm one of the 7000 Connect beta users and would like to say that I'm very happy with it. Other commenters are comparing this to Rapportive. LinkedIn has discontinued Rapportive and this is an excellent substitute. So far the hit rate for finding emails has been about 80 - 85% in my experience. As an aside: I think Clearbit's building a really excellent suite of APIs, and Connect is only the icing on the cake.
- niccolop 11y ago
  Has Rapportive been discontinued? It still works for me. Or do you mean Linkedin no longer work on it?
  - maxpupmax 11y ago
    Weird. It has never worked for me, and that seems to be the general consensus on the review of the extension. I'm on Chrome/Mac OSX. What os/browser are you using?
    - niccolop 11y ago
      Chrome/OSX 10.11
oni0n56 11y ago
I've been using the beta in my gmail for a while and the attention to detail is so amazing.
whatnotests 11y ago
I built a similar tool back in 2010 - for gmail, yahoo mail and hotmail. It was a browser plugin for Chrome, Firefox and Internet Explorer. I learned a lot about Gmail's DOM (it's highly obfuscated) and how terrible the plugin-writer's experience is for Internet Explorer. After six months of promotion on peoplesmart.com as an add-on to allow our users to get more information about the people in their email conversations, we had about twenty users total. The project was scrapped, and I moved on to my next thing. Perhaps it was just timing. Best of luck!
- tyingq 11y ago
  They do provide a very natural way to do it for paid gmail accounts: https://developers.google.com/gmail/contextual_gadgets https://developers.google.com/gmail/contextual_gadgets Not sure why there's no model to do this for standard gmail accounts.
gailees 11y ago
Does anyone else think it's scary that they are asking everyone on the community plan to share all of their business contacts? (https://www.dropbox.com/s/uuq96vivlbbrrak/Screenshot%202016-04-07%2014.45.22.png?dl=0 https://www.dropbox.com/s/uuq96vivlbbrrak/Screenshot%202016-...) Definitely stopped me from signing up to give it a try.
- matznerd 11y ago
  So sign up for a paid plan? The plugin works well, and at least by being upfront about utilizing your data, you know that there is a sustainable business model behind it, so it will not have to be discontinued or put out to pasture like Rapportive.
natrius 11y ago
A product people liked got shut down, so someone else rebuilt it. As a society, we're needlessly duplicating so much effort because we've decided treat software as a private good even though it's non-rivalrous and non-excludable. If we can come up with better ways to fund software, we can end this widespread waste and make progress faster.
- cloudjacker 11y ago
  in the open source community, the same problem occurs the moment that the steward rejects the pull request. So the altruist forks the project and releases it again with a new name.
desireco42 11y ago
I am one of beta users, Clearbit is really nice, it really helps me understand and research companies. Not all of them are covered but when they are, it is super useful. Also, because they have Alex MacCaw on team, for whom I have great respect as a developer, really makes me enjoy and like this product. Only thing that I encountered as a problem is that privacy plugins tend to disable it and mess with it running. I whitelisted it a little but it somewhat helped, not completely. Anyhow, really great product.
tyingq 11y ago
There's an api, and the pricing isn't cheap, but I feel like this is going to bring a whole new wave of spam after the initially scraped list gets resold over and over. You might have an additional revenue stream selling an "opt my email out of this thing" plan.

75 points by uptown 11y ago

Announcing Rapportive ... again.

gk1 11y ago

This will never be as useful as Rapportive without having LinkedIn as a data source. And since LinkedIn owns Rapportive and is probably not keen to share that data with a competitor, I don't see that happening any time soon.

fblp 11y ago
I have ran connect side by side with rapportive during the beta and have not noticed any data gaps. There are other sources of data beyond linkedin.

maxpupmax 11y ago

I'm one of the 7000 Connect beta users and would like to say that I'm very happy with it. Other commenters are comparing this to Rapportive. LinkedIn has discontinued Rapportive and this is an excellent substitute. So far the hit rate for finding emails has been about 80 - 85% in my experience. As an aside: I think Clearbit's building a really excellent suite of APIs, and Connect is only the icing on the cake.

niccolop 11y ago
Has Rapportive been discontinued? It still works for me. Or do you mean Linkedin no longer work on it?
- maxpupmax 11y ago
  Weird. It has never worked for me, and that seems to be the general consensus on the review of the extension. I'm on Chrome/Mac OSX. What os/browser are you using?
  - niccolop 11y ago
    Chrome/OSX 10.11

oni0n56 11y ago

I've been using the beta in my gmail for a while and the attention to detail is so amazing.

whatnotests 11y ago

I built a similar tool back in 2010 - for gmail, yahoo mail and hotmail. It was a browser plugin for Chrome, Firefox and Internet Explorer. I learned a lot about Gmail's DOM (it's highly obfuscated) and how terrible the plugin-writer's experience is for Internet Explorer. After six months of promotion on peoplesmart.com as an add-on to allow our users to get more information about the people in their email conversations, we had about twenty users total. The project was scrapped, and I moved on to my next thing. Perhaps it was just timing. Best of luck!

tyingq 11y ago
They do provide a very natural way to do it for paid gmail accounts: https://developers.google.com/gmail/contextual_gadgets https://developers.google.com/gmail/contextual_gadgets Not sure why there's no model to do this for standard gmail accounts.

gailees 11y ago

Does anyone else think it's scary that they are asking everyone on the community plan to share all of their business contacts? (https://www.dropbox.com/s/uuq96vivlbbrrak/Screenshot%202016-04-07%2014.45.22.png?dl=0 https://www.dropbox.com/s/uuq96vivlbbrrak/Screenshot%202016-...) Definitely stopped me from signing up to give it a try.

matznerd 11y ago
So sign up for a paid plan? The plugin works well, and at least by being upfront about utilizing your data, you know that there is a sustainable business model behind it, so it will not have to be discontinued or put out to pasture like Rapportive.

natrius 11y ago

A product people liked got shut down, so someone else rebuilt it. As a society, we're needlessly duplicating so much effort because we've decided treat software as a private good even though it's non-rivalrous and non-excludable. If we can come up with better ways to fund software, we can end this widespread waste and make progress faster.

cloudjacker 11y ago
in the open source community, the same problem occurs the moment that the steward rejects the pull request. So the altruist forks the project and releases it again with a new name.

desireco42 11y ago

I am one of beta users, Clearbit is really nice, it really helps me understand and research companies. Not all of them are covered but when they are, it is super useful. Also, because they have Alex MacCaw on team, for whom I have great respect as a developer, really makes me enjoy and like this product. Only thing that I encountered as a problem is that privacy plugins tend to disable it and mess with it running. I whitelisted it a little but it somewhat helped, not completely. Anyhow, really great product.

tyingq 11y ago

There's an api, and the pricing isn't cheap, but I feel like this is going to bring a whole new wave of spam after the initially scraped list gets resold over and over. You might have an additional revenue stream selling an "opt my email out of this thing" plan.