4 ms·

Inbox 2.0 isn't coming, it is here.

25 points by brezina 19y ago

My response to a recent NYT article on Inbox 2.0

joshwa 19y ago
When they have a web-based (or thunderbird-based, at least) client, then they'll be competitive with the Yahoo and Gmail hypothetical offerings.
- gaborcselle 19y ago
  Most people in corporations are using Outlook, so that's why we're initially targeting that client. Our product is definitely less hypothetical than any of the announced offerings out there, though. :-)
  - champion 19y ago
    Makes a lot of business sense, but doesn't help poor Gmail users whose Contacts app falls well short of the bar set by the rest of Gmail. Nice that it auto-adds contacts, but other than that it feels like a bastard stepchild feature to date.
  - mattmaroon 19y ago
    I actually greatly prefer Outlook to gmail anyway, so I'm glad you chose that route.
jgrahamc 19y ago
The thing about Xobni is that as much as I like it (having been doing interesting things with email for a very long time) and I think they are right to focus on Outlook (since it sux0r), I can't help thinking that Xobni is a _feature_ and not a company. Perhaps the Xobni guys can talk about what makes them think that it's a stand alone company? Perhaps the answer is that they don't, perhaps they just hope Microsoft will buy them. John.
- mgummelt 19y ago
  Google search was probably seen as a feature rather than a company. I don't know first hand though.
  - wmorein 19y ago
    That is definitely true. According to the Battelle book "Search" (good book by the way) and others, they tried to pitch themselves as a tech provider to Yahoo and others. That plan failed since no one was interested, and they went their own way.
- jsb 19y ago
  Having met one of Xobni's co-founders recently and hearing more about Xobni's vision, I can tell you that they are not just planning to be a plug in for Outlook. Xobni Insight is a plug in for Outlook, but it is just a starting point for the company. They do want to expand into Yahoo and Gmail clients, various instant messenger clients and who knows what else to help organize your personal information. Give them some more time and I'm sure you'll be seeing more offerings before long.
  - brezina 19y ago
    jsb got it right. Our goal is to organize your personal information centered around relationships and communication. Think of all the places where people communicate with you (web, IM, social networks); we want to organize that data. Present day Xobni is already more than a plugin to Outlook. We keep our own store of all of Outlook's email data and our UI doesn't use the Outlook plugin architecture (it is very limited). What does this mean? .... it means you can point Xobni at any email data store and display it within any application. However, there are costs to moving to new platforms, so for the time being Outlook is the place to be - 300 million users and they have credit cards.
- henning 19y ago
  there are companies whose flagship product is a plugin to a popular tool/environment. they are definitely companies. what are the sufficient conditions for going from feature to company?
lsb 19y ago
so xobni's an outlook plugin, right? why not write xobni's frontend in javascript (that a bookmarklet downloads), so that you can have the xobni experience in ie/ff when browsing gmail.
mattmaroon 19y ago
What grad degree were you working on at the time Matt?
- brezina 19y ago
  MS in Electrical Engineering. I completed all of the coursework, published part of my thesis research, just never turned in a thesis. I hope to finish some day.
  - ced 19y ago
    Curious: Why?
nanijoe 19y ago
Xobni has been a great productivity tool for me personally, I just wish they would release a public beta already. My co-workers keep asking me to 'hook them up', but my hands are tied at this point.
- oditogre 19y ago
  Ditto that - I'd love to give Xobni a spin.
plusbryan 19y ago
It's actually pretty easy to try out Xobni if all your email is in gmail. Using gmail's recent IMAP feature add, you can set up Outlook to check your gmail account, and then try Xobni without having to leave gmail. While outlook's support for imap is pretty sketchy, at least this is a way for interested gmailers to kick the tires and see what we're all about.
- tlrobinson 19y ago
  Gmail's support for IMAP is even sketchier. It's terrible. Perhaps it's because Gmail uses labels rather than folders, it doesn't map well. Also, when I delete a message from the inbox, it doesn't actually delete the freakin message, it just removes it from the inbox. Arggggg.
richcollins 19y ago
These days I don't really email much, but I guess email is the easiest place to start.
rontr 19y ago
At the risk of getting downvoted due to a negative-sounding comment, I must say that I don't find Xobni's plugin so useful (at least to me) by what I've read about it. I use Outlook at work and Gmail for my personal email, and I think that the main feature that's missing from Outlook is good search. All the other features that Xobni provides sound, like, well, features. Just because my emails my contain implicit information about my "social graph" (whatever that means), it doesn't mean I care about it in my daily work. All I want from Outlook is to give me a decent search feature like Gmail and I'll be happy. It's great that Xobni provides better search than Outlook, but that's not enough to get me excited about the rest of the product. I certainly don't see myself using a plugin that "enhances" my Gmail experience -- it's already quite good as it is. Gmail is my inbox 2.0. It came out a couple of years ago.
- pstuart 19y ago
  I'm forced to use Outlook at work and search is unusable. Google Desktop to the rescue!
tarkin2 19y ago
They're planning on extracting social data from emails when most people use social networks for that task now? It seems they're asking that people 1) start using their system instead of facebook et al 2) change their email address (unless it works as a plugin on other clients). If they plan on option two then I think they'll encounter problems: most people I know only use outlook for work use and the web-based ones are unlikely to allow this plugin when they could implement something similar themselves (as gmail already seems to be doing...) Besides, if they do want to extract social data I'd guess they would need to structure their site like a social networking site which means it will merely become another social networking site. It seems a very good idea, except for privacy concerns, but I wonder where they'll obtain the users when everyone uses facebook et al for online socialising.

25 points by brezina 19y ago

My response to a recent NYT article on Inbox 2.0

When they have a web-based (or thunderbird-based, at least) client, then they'll be competitive with the Yahoo and Gmail hypothetical offerings.

gaborcselle 19y ago
Most people in corporations are using Outlook, so that's why we're initially targeting that client. Our product is definitely less hypothetical than any of the announced offerings out there, though. :-)
- champion 19y ago
  Makes a lot of business sense, but doesn't help poor Gmail users whose Contacts app falls well short of the bar set by the rest of Gmail. Nice that it auto-adds contacts, but other than that it feels like a bastard stepchild feature to date.
- mattmaroon 19y ago
  I actually greatly prefer Outlook to gmail anyway, so I'm glad you chose that route.

jgrahamc 19y ago

The thing about Xobni is that as much as I like it (having been doing interesting things with email for a very long time) and I think they are right to focus on Outlook (since it sux0r), I can't help thinking that Xobni is a _feature_ and not a company. Perhaps the Xobni guys can talk about what makes them think that it's a stand alone company? Perhaps the answer is that they don't, perhaps they just hope Microsoft will buy them. John.

mgummelt 19y ago
Google search was probably seen as a feature rather than a company. I don't know first hand though.
- wmorein 19y ago
  That is definitely true. According to the Battelle book "Search" (good book by the way) and others, they tried to pitch themselves as a tech provider to Yahoo and others. That plan failed since no one was interested, and they went their own way.
jsb 19y ago
Having met one of Xobni's co-founders recently and hearing more about Xobni's vision, I can tell you that they are not just planning to be a plug in for Outlook. Xobni Insight is a plug in for Outlook, but it is just a starting point for the company. They do want to expand into Yahoo and Gmail clients, various instant messenger clients and who knows what else to help organize your personal information. Give them some more time and I'm sure you'll be seeing more offerings before long.
- brezina 19y ago
  jsb got it right. Our goal is to organize your personal information centered around relationships and communication. Think of all the places where people communicate with you (web, IM, social networks); we want to organize that data. Present day Xobni is already more than a plugin to Outlook. We keep our own store of all of Outlook's email data and our UI doesn't use the Outlook plugin architecture (it is very limited). What does this mean? .... it means you can point Xobni at any email data store and display it within any application. However, there are costs to moving to new platforms, so for the time being Outlook is the place to be - 300 million users and they have credit cards.
henning 19y ago
there are companies whose flagship product is a plugin to a popular tool/environment. they are definitely companies. what are the sufficient conditions for going from feature to company?

lsb 19y ago

so xobni's an outlook plugin, right? why not write xobni's frontend in javascript (that a bookmarklet downloads), so that you can have the xobni experience in ie/ff when browsing gmail.

mattmaroon 19y ago

What grad degree were you working on at the time Matt?

brezina 19y ago
MS in Electrical Engineering. I completed all of the coursework, published part of my thesis research, just never turned in a thesis. I hope to finish some day.
- ced 19y ago
  Curious: Why?

nanijoe 19y ago

Xobni has been a great productivity tool for me personally, I just wish they would release a public beta already. My co-workers keep asking me to 'hook them up', but my hands are tied at this point.

oditogre 19y ago
Ditto that - I'd love to give Xobni a spin.

plusbryan 19y ago

It's actually pretty easy to try out Xobni if all your email is in gmail. Using gmail's recent IMAP feature add, you can set up Outlook to check your gmail account, and then try Xobni without having to leave gmail. While outlook's support for imap is pretty sketchy, at least this is a way for interested gmailers to kick the tires and see what we're all about.

tlrobinson 19y ago
Gmail's support for IMAP is even sketchier. It's terrible. Perhaps it's because Gmail uses labels rather than folders, it doesn't map well. Also, when I delete a message from the inbox, it doesn't actually delete the freakin message, it just removes it from the inbox. Arggggg.

richcollins 19y ago

These days I don't really email much, but I guess email is the easiest place to start.

rontr 19y ago

At the risk of getting downvoted due to a negative-sounding comment, I must say that I don't find Xobni's plugin so useful (at least to me) by what I've read about it. I use Outlook at work and Gmail for my personal email, and I think that the main feature that's missing from Outlook is good search. All the other features that Xobni provides sound, like, well, features. Just because my emails my contain implicit information about my "social graph" (whatever that means), it doesn't mean I care about it in my daily work. All I want from Outlook is to give me a decent search feature like Gmail and I'll be happy. It's great that Xobni provides better search than Outlook, but that's not enough to get me excited about the rest of the product. I certainly don't see myself using a plugin that "enhances" my Gmail experience -- it's already quite good as it is. Gmail is my inbox 2.0. It came out a couple of years ago.

pstuart 19y ago
I'm forced to use Outlook at work and search is unusable. Google Desktop to the rescue!

tarkin2 19y ago

They're planning on extracting social data from emails when most people use social networks for that task now? It seems they're asking that people 1) start using their system instead of facebook et al 2) change their email address (unless it works as a plugin on other clients). If they plan on option two then I think they'll encounter problems: most people I know only use outlook for work use and the web-based ones are unlikely to allow this plugin when they could implement something similar themselves (as gmail already seems to be doing...) Besides, if they do want to extract social data I'd guess they would need to structure their site like a social networking site which means it will merely become another social networking site. It seems a very good idea, except for privacy concerns, but I wonder where they'll obtain the users when everyone uses facebook et al for online socialising.