Microsoft May Buy Email Startup Xobni

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1. other
   

   February 29th, 2008 at 12:51 pm

   LOL, I can’t believe the crunchbase listing for xobni has to specify that it’s inbox spelled backwards.

2. arjen
   

   February 29th, 2008 at 1:01 pm

   I have been using Xobni for the past 5-6 months and I have a love, hate feeling for it….the days that it works, its great and the times that it doesnt work and it slows the hell out of my outlook, all i wanna do is break my laptop….it will be interesting to see if they could scale the application and add more features.

3. Stupid person
   

   February 29th, 2008 at 1:01 pm

   Good thing they did… I didn’t realize it!!!

4. Marcus
   

   February 29th, 2008 at 1:02 pm

   Mike –
   It’s not like this is a surprise - these guys are clever and have a great product with clever marketing — How could M$ resist?

   Marcus
   UserVoice.com

5. MonkeyAttack
   

   February 29th, 2008 at 1:06 pm

   I use the app, and I like it. Having said that, I don’t see anything about it I would pay for, or maybe even be willing to put up with ads in a sidebar for. As a free module in Outlook from Microsoft though? Pure win.

6. Andrew Jones
   

   February 29th, 2008 at 1:20 pm

   I use Xobni but it does slow down my XP laptop so I hope Microsoft speeds it up and that it’s a free addon in the future!

7. tahw? (backwards)
   

   February 29th, 2008 at 1:23 pm

   Does anybody know what their revenue model is? Does one even exist?

8. steven
   

   February 29th, 2008 at 1:27 pm

   $20MM for a company that has no revenue and sells a silly social plugin?! Bubble!

9. HmmConvenient
   

   February 29th, 2008 at 1:33 pm

   Outlook 2007 > xobni. Done.

10. Your Daddy
    

    February 29th, 2008 at 1:35 pm

    Sub 20MM, I’d say 1MM for this.

11. Dustin Mooney
    

    February 29th, 2008 at 1:39 pm

    That would be bad for Xobni in my mind because they are working on cross-platform apps (it is supposed to work on Outlook, Apple Mail, and Thunderbird) all mail platforms. If Microsoft was to come in, then that wouldn’t happen, they would just allow it to work on Microsoft products! Which would SUCK!

12. Ali
    

    February 29th, 2008 at 1:43 pm

    I signed up and used it for a couple of weeks, but I had serious problems with. The major one was that it wouldn’t display when Outlook 2007 was opened just after a restart. I would of had to close Outlook and then reopen it to actually see it.
    Also I absolutely hated the fact that it kept its own address book and wasn’t synchronized with Outlook’s.
    And then worst of all, it was just another pane added to already several frames that is already there by default. I hate it how my Outlook looks like it’s all patched up, and I have to refer to somewhere else just to see some extended info that could have easily been displayed right where it supposed be. What I mean is that a lot more integration is what it’s really needed, but I don’t really blame them as you can’t really do better with current Outlook Plug-in architecture, so seeing it being acquired by Microsoft will at least be a step towards this needed integration.

13. orez
    

    February 29th, 2008 at 1:47 pm

    What a waste of $ unless the acquisition is really just a signing bonus to get a good team.

14. lawrence
    

    February 29th, 2008 at 1:55 pm

    take the money and run

15. Sebastian
    

    February 29th, 2008 at 2:01 pm

    Omg … Please, NO! Find anybody but not an owner of an application that’s targeted by Xobni. (Like Microsoft) They’d take the technology, integrate it with their product and stop all attempts that would integrate it with other applications.

    So: Please, NO!

    There is a business model around that project, so stop talking to Microsoft or any other company you target!

16. Yakov
    

    February 29th, 2008 at 2:14 pm

    are investors running away with whathever they can get out of a plug-in investment? 4m+>? for a MS outlook plug-in?! sounds like a good move..

17. Marcus
    

    February 29th, 2008 at 2:15 pm

    Will M$ know what to do with these kids? They look like a fun bunch - they’ll get gobbled up in the bureaucracy of a huge corporation, won’t they?

    marcus

18. Kevin
    

    February 29th, 2008 at 2:41 pm

    Xobni already raised too much money to make a 20M acquisition feel acceptable to everyone… they’re in too deep to take the money and run.

19. Ivan Kirigin
    

    February 29th, 2008 at 2:41 pm

    Awesome. It makes complete sense. Microsoft would be wise to continue on with plans to support other email clients. The data is really valuable, even if anonymous.

    Those comments that don’t see the value confuse me. No value in a plugin for a tool that tens of millions of people use that actually saves them time, money, and grief? Consider it also as an entry in the bottom-up new wave of social networks — where apps that people already use connect users to each other. Very smart.

20. Zach
    

    February 29th, 2008 at 3:26 pm

    “What a waste of $ unless the acquisition is really just a signing bonus to get a good team.”

    I think this comment is spot on. If they were interested in the product alone, they would just rip it. If this is true, it’s because they want the team to help build and expand Xobni-like functionality after it’s integrated into Outlook 2010…

21. pradeep
    

    February 29th, 2008 at 4:10 pm

    personally, i think xobni is unnecessary eye candy slowing down an already slow enough email client. don’t get me wrong, email analytics is interesting … once in a while. i don’t really need to know that i send my boss 2 emails an hour every time i open his thread esp. at the cost of my computer’s memory. the only value i see here is the search, but you can already get that with lookout, google desktop, etc. i just want email to be lighter and cleaner (less spam), with kickass search and labeling features (like gmail …). congrats to xobni for getting a bid, but i say take the money and let this product go. you know once your email plugin starts to look like winamp that you’re just forcing it i can’t think of another company besides microsoft being interested in this anyway … maybe they realize no one has written a windows application for years and want to promote their platform, even though the web has *clearly* won already. just being honest, all the best to xobni.

22. VentureDeal
    

    February 29th, 2008 at 4:50 pm

    Maybe MSFT will combine Xobni with the acquisition of a large social network, such as Plaxo…

23. Rajeev
    

    February 29th, 2008 at 5:15 pm

    @21
    “maybe they realize no one has written a windows application for years and want to promote their platform, even though the web has *clearly* won already”

    I kind of agree with you here. I’m sure MS would want to morph outlook into a product that is not merely a mail client but a gateway to the online social networking portals and such. In fact I can see a faint dotted line between this and the news that Bill Gates will answer questions on Linkedin (which was circulating a few days ago). So even if Xobni do not necessarily add any massive value to Outlook they may want to show the world that developers who create plugins for outlook can potentially earn a decent payout…

24. BaffledOnlooker
    

    February 29th, 2008 at 6:16 pm

    This is ABSURD. This is everything that is wrong with venture investing.

    The product has no revenue. No path to revenue. No defensible technology. No massive reach. They are 100% reliant on Microsoft to allow them to continue inter-operating with Outlook.

    Someone, please, explain?

    None of the arguments above come close to justifying a $20m valuation.

25. Jackson
    

    February 29th, 2008 at 7:13 pm

    I just hope it doesn’t suffer the same fate as Lookout.

26. fort myers fl photographer
    

    February 29th, 2008 at 9:25 pm

    I don’t know if you can justify the cost, but it does look like a nice tool. I am always looking for a photograph I sent or a phone number I did not save…

27. Don Jones
    

    February 29th, 2008 at 10:14 pm

    MSFT should acquire Plaxo and integrate it with Xob…

28. Are You Listening?
    

    March 1st, 2008 at 12:01 am

    Haha the Y-Combinator rumor mill at it again. They managed to pull one Rick Roll on all of us with Reddit and now Paul Graham is at it again with Xobni.

    MSFT will probably buy it because they do this all the time. It’s not that they couldn’t actually herald the engineering resources to do it, it’s just easier to acquire something that’s out there. That being said, what’s the need for Xobni? Wait, there is none. That’s the signature of Y-Combinator companies - they solve non-existent problems.

29. Jugo
    

    March 1st, 2008 at 5:15 am

    Again with the TC usage of “surface”… It’s an intransitive verb fer chrissakes. Can’t you speak proper English?

30. Zoli Erdos
    

    March 1st, 2008 at 11:39 pm

    It kinda looked obvious after the Bill Gates demo

31. Tony
    

    March 2nd, 2008 at 7:30 pm

    The best thing about Xobni is not the search, it’s the list of recent files exchanged with the contact. I use that almost every day

32. outlook guy
    

    March 13th, 2008 at 10:41 am

    Doesn’t Plaxo have a similar plugin? And I’ve got to assume Plaxo has a much bigger user base. Between the Plaxo and LinkedIn pluggins, I’m tentative to install another.