Xobni - a waste of money

http://greatapps.blogspot.com/2008/04/xobni-what-waste-of-money.html

by bosshog • 18 years ago

34 62 18 years ago

greatapps.blogspot.com

Gee, and people wonder why UK startups hate the VCs over there.

gruseom3• 18 years ago

Here's an example of how the context-freeness of the web can work against you. I've never seen this guy's blog before. The headline was just interesting enough to get above my click threshold. But when I got to the post, all I noticed was how badly written it is:

perhaps it was quickly than trying to replicate

some Microsoft underlying thinks that they will make the old boss happy

If I knew the writer to be a frequent source of good insights, this wouldn't have much effect. But I don't, so it does.

ecommercematt• 18 years ago

This is the third time in a short span that I've found myself interested in your comments. Contact me if you'd be interested in discussing issues relating to context online further (my email address is in my profile).

Tichy8• 18 years ago

Dismissing comments because of spelling errors? Not sure where it would lie in PG's categories (ad hominen?), but anyway. I remember the other saying, that sometimes you can learn more from your enemies than from your friends, because they are more likely to tell you the truth. How many people here on HN will dare to criticize a YC startup?

Personally I don't need or use Xobni, so I can't comment. And anyway, I probably make a lot of spelling mistakes, too, because English is only my second language. So feel free to ignore my comments.

dunn• 18 years ago

>> How many people here on HN will dare to criticize a YC startup?

You said it. Doing so is grounds for ruthless downmodding on here.

PG said there are 30 editors now. People are getting accounts marked dead at the drop of a hat, if they don't drink the kool-aid.

mrtron3• 18 years ago

I doubt many people on here need or use Xobni, it is strictly an Outlook plugin?

I didn't even use Outlook way back in the day when I was employed by a Fortune 500 that forced everyone to use it. I remember once someone mentioning to my manager that I hadn't completed my Outlook training and everyone in our group had a good laugh.

We aren't quite the target audience generally speaking.

gruseom3• 18 years ago

I think you may have misunderstood my emphasis (my fault). I'm not interested in the grammatical mistakes as such; I'm interested in what happens when I go to read a web page from a source I'm unfamiliar with. Because URLs are pointers, I jump directly to content in medias res with very little context. In the absence of context, other indicators fill the vacuum. In this case, the sloppiness of the writing affected my perception of the author - which may be unfair. I'd have to read more to know for sure. But that's my point: fair or unfair, I'm not inclined to. (The photo didn't help, either.)

It's interesting that you brought up not being a native speaker. That is a piece of context I instinctively scan for, because if I get it wrong my judgment will be off. In this case, the title ("a UK VC") and the fellow's name made me expect the Queen's English and, now that I think of it, probably raised the standard I unconsciously applied.

One can make errors about this. I knew an American who had mastered Russian to such an extent that Russians thought he was Russian. This backfired. Inevitably, he would put things in a way that a real Russian never would. Not realizing he was a brilliant student of their language, native speakers concluded that he was an illiterate Russian. That's something Russians care about a lot, so he got badly treated.

As for your comments, I don't ignore them; I'm familiar enough with your user name that I must have read many of them, though I don't remember anything specific. I bet that if I had been asked, I would have identified you as an intelligent non-native-English speaker, and if I noticed any spelling mistakes I doubt they mattered.

edw5195• 18 years ago

"Dismissing comments because of spelling errors?"

On a post to a forum like this, of course not.

But not even running your own blog post through a spell or grammar checker?

Unakseptibal!

aswanson2• 18 years ago

Dismissing comments because of spelling errors? Not sure where it would lie in PG's categories (ad hominen?)*

hominen makes this hilariously recursive.

tx• 18 years ago

I didn't care about social aspect at all, there were two absolutely crucial features in Xobni that I absolutely loved:

1. Ability to instantly see all attachments sent by a given person.

2. Outlook's own search is unusable, I never mastered it, Xobni was a godsend.

Take any product: some people like it and some won't. I liked Xobni and this guy didn't. God knows why, perhaps he didn't have enough attachments or didn't bother to search anything because of his phenomenal memory or something :)))

far33d• 18 years ago

Note, he used it on a home machine using his webmail, not his work email. Xobni seems much more useful for professional email than the email account you use for your amazon account and emailing your parents.

angstrom3• 18 years ago

I still use LookOut which solved the search issue 4+ years ago. Ironic that Microsoft should buy LookOut. Bury it. Then look at buying a company that solved the same problem again, even after not integrating the previous acquisition (which mind you was fast and never slowed down Outlook).

Unfortunately, I saw the attachment lookup as the only thing useful.

nreece• 18 years ago

That was my first impression too. Xobni is LookOut, only more social. LookOut used Lucene to index the email's and allow flashing-fast searches. Too bad MS killed them.

edawerd• 18 years ago

I've never used LookOut, but having thousands of corporate emails in my Outlook, I can say that Xobni really rocks! I quickly ran out on private invites, and just started pirating the software to my coworkers, boss, and even the secretary, who I always catch sitting as his desk searching through emails.

In my opinion, they honed in on a huge problem of email search and solved it really well.

Admittedly, not all of the features of Xobni are very useful, but I think the user interface (keeping the search history), super-fast email search, and phone number extraction are all useful features.

They also did a good job of picking colors to make it look different from Outlook because people who walk by my desk always seem to catch the bright colors and ask me "what is that?!"

bluelu• 18 years ago

Feature 1: 1 day work<br> Feature 2: 1 week work<br>

I used it for a few days and removed it later because it provided no real value, except for my coworkers asking me what I had there in outlook. I don't need a person ranking or the amount of emails sent by that person at a certain timespan. I just want to organize my email.

sharpshoot• 18 years ago

This isn't actually a 'vc' in the UK who has any standing either

bosshog• 18 years ago

Can you share any more?

greatapps3• 18 years ago

Sumon, thanks for your kind comment on my "standing". I look forward to seeing you again in London in person, perhaps at Open Coffee, and maybe we can compare our respective CVs. Meantime, perhaps you can elaborate on what relevance my employment has to my comments on my user experience of this Outlook add-in?

pg2• 18 years ago

He said this because the original title of the post described it as the opinion of a "UK VC." Since most of the readers of News.YC are American, he knew they'd naturally be curious whether you were a well-known one or not.

jgrahamc• 18 years ago

> I look forward to seeing you again in London in person,

> perhaps at Open Coffee, and maybe we can compare our

> respective CVs.

The CV of the commentator is irrelevant. He's not claiming to be more experienced/well known than you; he is claiming that you are not a well known UK VC.

jamess2• 18 years ago

I tend to agree. It was worth having a go at buying the company, but now they've been rebuffed their next best option is simply to clone the interesting bits in house.

It'll take them six months to produce a reasonable facsimile , but then they probably don't have another feature release planned for that amount of time anyway.

Personally, I think the Xobni guys are fools for refusing the offer. If Microsoft are interested in acquiring the technology, then they're almost certainly going to become a competitor now the offer is refused. They could do far worse than selling out for 20 odd million in cash and stock, spending a couple of years working for Microsoft while their stock vests and then going on to the next big thing. Instead they've got themselves an uphill battle in which they are running very barely ahead of a corporate juggernaut.

Well whatever happens, it should be entertaining.

pius• 18 years ago

They turned down the offer? I totally missed that. Where'd you see that?

jamess2• 18 years ago

Here: http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/04/20/microsoft-signs-letter-...

henning2• 18 years ago

Yes they were foolish to turn down the offer, but competing against a culture as meeting-centric and slow as Microsoft's is less challenging than you might think, IMO.

(I can't believe they turned down the offer!)

fleaflicker• 18 years ago

There are a lot of factors to weight when considering a sale. It's not as simple as weighing the (rumored and potentially inaccurate) purchase price.

You can't say it was foolish unless you know everything--payment schedule (cash/stock/milestones), ambition of founders, post-acquisition employment requirements, future direction of the product.

edw5195• 18 years ago

"but competing against a culture as meeting-centric and slow as Microsoft's is less challenging than you might think"

I think I'll get another opinion about that from someone at Netscape, Lotus, or Corel.

Oh, never mind.

zkinion• 18 years ago

I can just feel the angst and envy in this thread. Despite being a silly product, they still worked very hard on it and built up enough spin and hype to get it to that point. It brings up the argument that a startup can do any kind of shenanigans as their business, but with hard work, resourcefulness, determination, and perseverance, they can still be successful. Go read their blog from years ago when it was just a couple of guys driving out to the valley, all the way up till now with seven digit offers coming in.

Xobni will make off like bandits despite how "worthless" the product is. The next offer will be for way more than the original $20 million. I wish them the best of luck.

mynameishere• 18 years ago

The next offer will be for way more than the original $20 million.

You could be right. But when I saw that "20 million" I could hardly believe it. If I was a MSFT exec, I'd simply say, "we'll give you 1.5 million (or whatever), take it or leave it." If they left it, I'd have a couple interns replicate the thing.

okeumeni• 18 years ago

I have not used Xobni myself, but I think if I have implemented a plug in for Outlook, offered $20M by Microsoft for it, I will take the money and run as fast as I can. Outlook is a Microsoft product, they have unlimited resources, they understand Outlook itself better than anyone outside. Hey this guys can replicate the plug in really fast time trust me. I’m a consultant and done stuff for them I know some of the people there; a bunch of really smarts hackers.

Tichy8• 18 years ago

Plus, Microsoft is dead, and hence Outlook is dead, too.

greatapps3• 18 years ago

Dear All, as the originator of the blog post that has sparked this thread may I begin by apologising for my sloppy spelling errors on the post, which I've corrected and thanks for highlighting them. However, to correct some of the misunderstandings and prejudices of other contributors to this thread

- I was testing the add-in using BUSINESS email and sadly have too many attachments on incoming emails from people who don't use online collaboration services.

- I've never tended to use an email inbox to store documents, preferring windows file folders instead. Hence the attachments get saved off on receipt. Personally I always found Outlook quite flaky as a file storage system and would also hate to rely on remembering who sent which document.

- I had to test Xobni on a family desktop as I've migrated away from Outlook for all my work activities and Xobni only works in Outlook. Why pay licence fees when you can use identical services online for free and access them from anywhere? Hence, I simply downloaded business emails onto the home machine to test over a couple of weeks.

- Google desktop search is what I use to find anything on a PC, albeit most of my docs get stored in the "cloud" these days. Hence, Xobni "search", which is restricted to Outlook content, was superfluous.

- As for the photo comments, sadly it's the face I was born with and the photo was taken by Ian Forrestor of BBC Backstage fame at the London BBC Backstage & Geek party in 2006. That my opinion is diminished coz you don't like my picture...........wow, tough crowd

- Oddly enough, I was writing as a past Xobni user and of my experience of the product - my comments had nothing to do with being an investor.

- I'm delighted that some people could derive use from this product. Evidently we have considerably different needs or have settled on alternate solutions.

yters3• 18 years ago

I regret that you've had this experience here. For some of us, the success of startups is quite understandably an emotional issue, though that doesn't excuse bad behavior like insulting your photo.

For the most part though, we primarily value respectful rational discussion and I apologize again for catching some of us on a bad day.

edw5195• 18 years ago

Ditto.

One of the things I noticed at Startup School was that people were so busy talking about substance (hacking, business, etc.), that there was little time for fluff.

In any large group there are outliers. You found a few.

OTOH, I noticed you referred to us as "groupies" on your blog, but omitted that sentence in this reply. I'm guessing you knew it would be inflammatory here.

Nerds. Geeks. Weirdos. Bipolar obsessive compulsive basket cases. Fine.

But groupies? (Throws pocket protector at pg on stage.)

tocomment• 18 years ago

What relationships does Xobni uncover? How does it do it?

I was thinking to make a web app where people could upload their cell phone records and it would find relationships, but I'm not sure what to look for exactly. Any ideas?

angstrom3• 18 years ago

I would start with very trusting people. The kind that would be gullible enough to upload their private phone records.

Seriously though. This is just like what Facebook tried to do with the purchase history thing last fall. It didn't go over too well. There's good reason that some things should never be made public.

The problem I see with the social networks is that in order for them to capture any truely valuable relationship data they have to tread on First Amendment rights. Google can luckily stay in the annonymous territory and reap the rewards. The social networks aren't going to be as lucky.

Prrometheus• 18 years ago

So, someone that doesn't usually use Outlook doesn't like Xobni's Outlook plug-in? How is this newsworthy?

Many of the things he said he never did in Outlook were things I did when I used Outlook four dozen times a day. He could have saved time by writing "I am not in the target audience" and been done with it.

greatapps3• 18 years ago

The observations I made about Xobni on my blog post were reflective of a) having formerly used Outlook for many years in large corporate settings b) my assessment of the functional usefulness of the add-in to me. I'm happy to hear about your personal experiences of the add-in in order to better understand the killer features/purposes I've apparently missed and the value it has given you.

wumi• 18 years ago

this implies you consider the native Outlook search, message threading, and attachment handling better than Xobni's. i'd be surprised if you used Outlook for that long and really thought so.

vlad• 18 years ago

The only person I can think of who is a level above anybody else is Patrick Collison. Everyone else is just in the game, and that's the most important thing. It's easy to think, why the hell did a startup get funded? However, VC's have to invest--it's their job--because the money will be lost due to inflation. And they can't invest in one company, they have to diversify. So if a group of young people with a revenge of the nerds attitude and no other commitments are willing to move to California and work harder than anybody else, and in the software field, no less, then what other choice do VC's have than to invest?

Young people (less commitments, more optimism) make up a small portion of the population. Good programmers make up a small portion as well. Those willing to relocate (California), also. Those who are willing to dedicate themselves to doing a startup for multiple years, tiny. So when you find an individual who has all of these qualities, and as part of a bigger group, you're now talking a very tiny, tiny portion of the country. And VC's have no choice but to invest in you.

Xobni - a waste of money

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