[qi:107] Recession…what recession? In Silicon Valley, the funding torrent continues. Xobni, which is building a social email platform by plugging into existing platforms such as Microsoft Outlook, has raised another C$3 million $3.2 million in funding from the BlackBerry Partners Fund, taking its Series B total to $10 million. (Our previous Xobni coverage across our network.)
another highly overrated ….social ? buzzzzzzzzzzzz
Om, thanks for the shout-out
gp, our users tell us xobni’s value isn’t in adding another social tool to their lives. They tell us the value is allowing them to search email and manage relationships more easily – we just so happen to do this by leveraging the social nature of email as well as the social explosion on the web. I’ll tell you, i can’t imagine not having xobni and not seeing a picture for each person that emails me. Now i know exactly who to look for when i meet someone for coffee at Starbucks.
Xobni is about being better at your job and going home early from work.
Regards,
Matt Brezina
Founder, Xobni
Matt,
Is Xobni only specific to outlook or will there ever be version for other mail clients like thunderbird plug-in/ mac mail ? Not everybody uses Outlook as it costs has license costs and a potential virus/malware magnet …while corporate use outlook is big but users generally dont have rights to install 3rd party apps due domain group policies implemented by IS teams
I am also curious whats Xobni planned revenue stream ………….perhaps sell it to M$ when time is right 😉
Rgds,
Gp
looks interesting! any plans supporting russian language?
Thanks Om…after reading this post again I have installed Xobni in my laptop. 🙂 I hope the crash problem is now resolved.
Matt, what about us MAC users – nothing for entourage or mac mail
I have tried Xobni a couple of times, each time decided to uninstall in about a day due to severe performance issues with Outlook. Until and unless these issues are addressed, I would not recommend it to anyone. But I am periodically keep checking, I really see value if the performance issues could be nailed.
Hari – I’m with you! I’ve also tried Xobni several times but ended up uninstalling because there was a noticeable degradation in performance. I really do love the concept and I like what it does. It’s just that at this point in time, I need faster Outlook response more than I need to mine my emails.
Perhaps there’s some conflict that is causing this slowdown? I don’t know and I didn’t have time to trouble shoot it. I will also continue to watch them as it’s a fascinating proposition.
Look here’s the confusion:
1) Xobni doesn’t know if they want to be a social play or mission critical app
2) Blackberry Fund should be focus investing on mobile apps and not desktop apps. Lord only knows how much help the largest LP (RIMM) needs help.
I suppose these two are a match made in heaven. They don’t know what they want to do.
I use Xobni in Outlook and I think the search options are much faster than Outlook’s. I can easily find conversations and attachments I’ve shared with people without having to wait 10 minutes for Outlook to search through all my emails. Some emails can still get away from you no matter how organized you might be. I don’t use many of the other social features though.
if its search you want use google desktop search which can index outlook pst much faster
I love xobni. Its amazing. I recommend it to everyone. The only thing is it slows down your computer.
Xobni is a great asset to Outlook – really improves relationships with anyone who ever sends you a message. Even people I barely know, Xobni brings up photos from their LinkedIn or Facebook profile, as well as showing all recent conversations/content.
Although it was a bit glitchy last year, I now notice no degradation of performance – although I’m running under Parallels with a hi-spec MacPro (is that significant?)
One thing I’m really interested in seeing is OSX accommodation – either in Entourage, or in iMail – especially as SnowLeopard will hook into Exchange Server (hurrah!). Roll on June 2009 (?).
There are other great Outlook helpers too…xobni is not the only and not the best one! Ok it has some nice features, but there are also some negative points… beside this why should I invest in a product/ company, which gets money from everywhere and so has already enough! I for myself want to spend my money and so support small but great and professional companies with a modern tool, so Lookeen!