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I haven't yet seen an unique usefull idea from xobni so far, except that they group attachements by author....

by bluelu 18y ago

rms 18y ago
They added Gmail-style conversational threading to Outlook. That's one of the best features of Gmail and something Outlook was really missing. It's not a unique feature, but it's definitely useful. There aren't many companies out there that are trying to improve the basic functionality of email; I'm actually surprised that Xobni has seen so little competition.
- bluelu 18y ago
  Thanks. I didn't see that when I tried it out. The email timeline and the user ranking weren't so usefull for me when I tried it out.
- briansmith 18y ago
  Once you get used to it, outlook's standard conversation view is more convenient than GMail's, at least for me.
SwellJoe 18y ago
I've never used the product (I've never considered Outlook an acceptable mail client, and I haven't had Windows on the desktop in over 10 years), so I can't say. They seem like smart guys willing to evolve--I think it's hard to over-estimate the importance of the big market+rapid evolution in building a really big business. Email is a big market. Whether they've hit on a big need yet, is questionable--I don't feel an urge to install Outlook in order to be able to use it, but I'm not the target market. But they are evolving rapidly, so if they find that killer need before they run out of runway, they'll do fine. A lot of folks over-estimate the value of consumer users and greatly under-estimate the value of commercial users. Xobni may be a product for commercial users. In fact, I suspect it probably is. Monetizing those kinds of users is much easier if you provide value, and you only have to sign on a few of them to make the business make sense. I hope they'll be careful not to get too caught up in the Web 2.0 "hai guyz, can has viral adopshun plz? kthxbai" stuff. It's tempting when you're in the industry in the valley to fall for the blogs and press saying that the future is in X (where X is some combination of: social networking, locality-based mobile services, etc. but universally consumer apps, because those are the ones that get lots of readers when the blogs and press talk about them), but there are many futures. And businesses buying useful products and services is one of them.

I haven't yet seen an unique usefull idea from xobni so far, except that they group attachements by author....

by bluelu 18y ago

I haven't yet seen an unique usefull idea from xobni so far, except that they group attachements by author....

rms 18y ago

They added Gmail-style conversational threading to Outlook. That's one of the best features of Gmail and something Outlook was really missing. It's not a unique feature, but it's definitely useful. There aren't many companies out there that are trying to improve the basic functionality of email; I'm actually surprised that Xobni has seen so little competition.

bluelu 18y ago
Thanks. I didn't see that when I tried it out. The email timeline and the user ranking weren't so usefull for me when I tried it out.
briansmith 18y ago
Once you get used to it, outlook's standard conversation view is more convenient than GMail's, at least for me.

SwellJoe 18y ago

I've never used the product (I've never considered Outlook an acceptable mail client, and I haven't had Windows on the desktop in over 10 years), so I can't say. They seem like smart guys willing to evolve--I think it's hard to over-estimate the importance of the big market+rapid evolution in building a really big business. Email is a big market. Whether they've hit on a big need yet, is questionable--I don't feel an urge to install Outlook in order to be able to use it, but I'm not the target market. But they are evolving rapidly, so if they find that killer need before they run out of runway, they'll do fine. A lot of folks over-estimate the value of consumer users and greatly under-estimate the value of commercial users. Xobni may be a product for commercial users. In fact, I suspect it probably is. Monetizing those kinds of users is much easier if you provide value, and you only have to sign on a few of them to make the business make sense. I hope they'll be careful not to get too caught up in the Web 2.0 "hai guyz, can has viral adopshun plz? kthxbai" stuff. It's tempting when you're in the industry in the valley to fall for the blogs and press saying that the future is in X (where X is some combination of: social networking, locality-based mobile services, etc. but universally consumer apps, because those are the ones that get lots of readers when the blogs and press talk about them), but there are many futures. And businesses buying useful products and services is one of them.