This is an interesting story in light of the discussion yesterday about the fate of the intellectual property of failed startups. Email startup Xobni, which recently turned down a $20 million acquisition offer from Microsoft, says they have acquired the key patents around a product called Zaplets which originally launched in 2000.
Zaplets was an email product that put synchronized applications into email messages. The goal was to reduce email back and forth around things like scheduling meetings, coordinating events, etc. Any time an email turned into a thread, Zaplets may be more useful – all those responses would be brought right back into the original email. The Zaplet automatically updated itself in the original email, so long threads were avoided.
If Zaplets launched today, they’d call them email widgets.
Zaplets parent company, FireDrop, raised over $100 million from a slew of investors, including Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers. Their 2000 Series D round alone was reportedly $90 million. USA Today called it “one of the Valley’s most sizzling start-ups.” Dave Winer, by contrast, failed to find it interesting. As an aside, I remember being in their offices and seeing a demo of the product, but I can’t remember why (I had my own company then, and certainly wasn’t running around getting startup demos). I liked it.
But Zaplets were not to be it seems. Eventually Firedrop shut down, the employees dispersed and the assets eventually made their way to MetricStream.
Xobni CEO Jeff Bonforte says the Zaplet idea was a good one, just too early. And that’s why they’ve acquired much of the intellectual property of FireDrop from MetricStream. He won’t say what they paid, but hinted that it was in the low hundreds of thousands of dollars for the portfolio of ten key patents.
Bonforte says reducing email threads down to a single active message is a key factor in solving the email problem I wrote about last month. And he thinks Xobni will eventually be able to do that with the IP they’ve just acquired.
Some screen shots of the old Zaplet website are below.
Zaplets tried to patent the use of forms in HTML email. But one of the basic reasons for creating HTML email was to allow the use of markup in email and forms have always been part of HTML. In fact email forms was one of the motivations behind creating the HTML email standard. I had hoped that these bad patents would stay dead.
This is very interesting. Now are Xobni trying to gain access into other areas, so that they can get more interest and more money from Microsoft?
funny… I wrote about Xobni and “the old Firedrop stuff” just yesterday while posting about the social inbox.
Looks like they’ve done a smart choice – not selling to Microsoft – in light of their confident march to becoming the best email app on the market.
Zaplets idea is a good one (by the way, Gmail puts email threads into one item in the inbox too) and creating a smart email app (Xobni’s app) that can be easily implemented into (or with) Outlook and Lotus email is a great business strategy.
Wondered what happened to these guys. The initial idea if configurable, re-combinable widgets for consumer functions and business workflow sounded interesting, but the more specific they got the less interesting they seemed.
KP put a lot into promoting them. Good thing they recovered with ‘Ginger’.
Wow, I remember signing up for Zaplets I suppose back in 2000 although it feels like it was even before then. At the time I owned an email marketing company and I think we were playing around with ways to create more engaging campaigns.
all these email widget will be ban from email servers, too dangerous for potential spyware or hacks. I can write a widget to read all your cookies or run a “delete all” account to ur outlook mail box when u open it.
there is a reason it didn’t work, email was there in 2000
Xobni has been an excellent utility, and these patents could both enhance that strategy, or allow them to bridge into a medium strategy.
As a utility, Xobni works for any user, and with all of their stored e-mails, regardless of whether any of their contacts also use it. They could use FireDrop’s tech to add better visualizations for information contained within the e-mail, which has been their core focus so far.
If they instead start offering functionality that only works between contacts who both have Xobni, then we’re seeing a big shift in their business strategy; it suddenly provides an incentive (other than, “hey, this is awesome”) for users to encourage their coworkers and friends to add Xobni. The best thing they could do to enhance that strategy is streamline the installation process even further.
That strategy may also provide hope for Xobni compatibility for Thunderbird, as their business goal becomes adoption, rather than having strategic value for a specific platform.
purchase WHAT? the entire world of DHTML has changed since zaplets failed.
what is it exactly that is being bought? netscape4 compatibility????
this could be trivially reimplemented using modern code
wow, even $100 for this is wasted money.
Zaplets didn’t work because they broke the e-mail paradigm. They forced you to check OLD e-mails to see updates within those old e-mails. That’s not how e-mails work. Old e-mails shouldn’t change. Fatal flaw.
The only way to update old e-mails that makes sense is to bring them to the top of the e-mail heap, like gmail does. I’m not a fan of this, and it’s my opinion that this major and pretentious change in e-mail functionality confuses users and is why gmail can’t catch up with Yahoo and Hotmail.
Mike,
I remember you meeting with these guys when we were at Achex. I think the reason you were meeting with them was to get our payments platform (which was a Paypal-type product) integrated into their Zaplets product.
I remember thinking that it was a really interesting product back then and cant believe noone has done anything like that since. Should be interesting seeing where it goes.
Enabling HTML to work from mail clients involved a lot of work and standardization. Obviously this work was done for a reason and forms was one of those reasons. A lot of people were upset back then when Zaplets came in about a year later and patented the whole HTML forms in email thing. What did the Zaplets people think? That they just miraculously discovered this new capability is the client software? That’s probably what they thought, but that capability didn’t get the by accident.
Email based forms did not become widespread because they were a gigantic security hole. Spammers could use them to cause you to run Javascript just by looking at their spam. That hole caused most of the HTML email features to get disabled everywhere.
BTW, a similar capability that was added to HTML email and then disabled was the ability to embed sound clips in HTML email that played when the mail was opened. Anyone remember the Congressional testimony when some staffer in the booth opened a spam that played porno sounds on live TV?
Maybe today’s browsers are secure enough to enable these features again. But that sure doesn’t make them patentable concepts.
Very interesting, the Zaplet concept sounds like Phuser, except that Phuser is web-based and uses email to direct people back into the conversation. The Phuser Activities are scaling to accommodate date deciding, polls and even other Web 2.0 integrations.
Having emails blocked, especially by the likes of Hotmail is a real problem which is only going to get worse.
In all honesty, most of Web 2.0 is rehashing old Web 1.0 companies, but the market is ready.
Zaplets was cool, though.
what a supreme waste of time and money. people use im for streaming conversations. people won’t get this and it won’t have traction. they are trying to boil the ochin. they should have accepted microsoft’s offer, outlook plugins are so lame and xobni really thinks a bit too much of themselves.
The REAL story here is how Web 2.0 is really nothing new. It’s kinda funny actually.
Technology from 8 years ago does EXACTLY what startups have been pouring millions of dollars into simply re-inventing.
Web 2.0 (or 3.0 or whatever the next buzzword for the same old thing will be), for all of its hype as being revolutionary, is really just some updated code and a handful of new features, with a bubbly-boxed-primary-colored aesthetic…
BigString was profiled here a little while ago for their self-destructing IM messages.
But, one of their earlier efforts involved erasable, self-destructing email. I liked the idea of that, but could not be bothered to sign up with another email provider.
If Xobni is buying up patents around email, I wonder if they will pick up BigString’s patents around that as well.
I’m a bit surprised that Zaplets have patents around what they do; but I’m sure there are worse patents than that
It was probably worth the couple of hundred thousand for Xobni to avoid a legal headache.
I used Zaplets back in 2000 and really liked it. Thought it is a great tool to levearage emails for simple workflows and information aggregation. Always wonder why they weren’t more successful.
I thought Zaplets were pretty cool when they launched, glad to see someone pick it up. I wonder how well they will work these days, though, consider that many email clients (esp Outlook) have gone backwards in terms of supporting javascript.
xobni {seesmic_video:{”url_thumbnail”:{”value”:”http://t.seesmic.com/thumbnail/nCAw4vATF3_th1.jpg”}”title”:{”value”:”xobni ”}”videoUri”:{”value”:”http://www.seesmic.com/video/SIZHLpsPDL”}}}
@!6, yea, but you forgot:L
-2/3 US population IP connectivity penetration (200M people)
- “Always on” connectivity (no-dialup, lol)
- much improved security and PERCEIVED security (pervasive ecommerce/ ebanking)
The current state of the internet lends itself well to many “web 1.0″ ideas that were simply to early b/c of technology maturity and community acceptance. Let’s see more.
SW patents suck
I’m having a hard time remembering the product, but I do remember the company was a place that Vinod stored a massive amount of money during the dotcom bust. I remember being totally puzzled why a company with such an iffy product neeed $150 million or so.
I think the idea was web forms in Outlook email messages. A big “So…?” — it seemed that Microsoft did all the work of this innovation. Maybe Xobni wants to sue people who use HTML email or maybe they got sued by whatever remains of Zaplet.
I work on SW patents nearly every week in my startup. They protect our original ideas, create value, and provide a barrier to entry. What “sucks” is not having your IP protected and then watching MS throw 100 engineers on your idea and swamping you out of the market.
No SW patents = No innovation
Xobni – good move and good luck.
As one of the architects brought in to develop version 3 of zaplet it appears to me that this is simply a patent grab. The whole technology is built on Java specifically to run on BEA and JBoss. It must also be said that the latest version that came out was 80% opensource.
For people to assume we just dispursed is not the case, it was infact a decision made internally to move the code to india, however, the decision was then made to simply shelve the code.
I am now chief integtation architect for a telco in Canada and I must say I see almost on a daily basis area’s that the technology could be used. Anyway, hope they have fun with it, but I doubt the code written by myself and others will ever see the light of day
I think here is more important idea, than just matter of implementation, like Java, EJB, PHP and so on. Internet security almost killed the idea. However I believe the idea is more powerful if someone can think now. it is future of Internet and entire e-mail system. BTW Google was inspired by Zaplet idea when created gmail.
worked at zaplet. the tech and concept were crap then. the world moved on. this thing should have died on the scrap heap with the rest of the bust.
wank-wear at its finest.
Given a number of the developers and architects went there it is no surpirse. However, I have been looking to use it in a totally different way than it was ever intended for. There are a number of misconceptions going on in this thread, the security was totally revamped in version three and was actually done by a person I would call one of the smartest security people I have met ( he was one of the original developers from netscape ). As for the comments around dhtml etc, we also provided other implementations that would allow you to work with this system either via email, standard webpage as well as portlets
I should clarify a few things:
(a) Xobni licensed the IP from MetricStream, not bought. The IP in question is 10 very well written, very well thought-out patents. So Metric Stream “owns” the IP. We licensed the consumer licenses exclusively and have an enterprise license, but non-exclusively
(b) MetricStream *is* Firedrop. It didn’t go out of business. It evolved and is a profitable ongoing company with great products. It focuses on enterprise products today. Today we focus on individual users.
(c) We don’t own any of the Zaplets code. I am sure it is great code, but that is still very much MetricStream’s asset. Xobni sees a bright future in making email better. Part is through a smarter inbox with our existing product. But we also see a future where the email itself is smarter and more powerful. That is driver behind licensing this IP from MetricStream.
Otherwise, thanks for the post Michael. The inbox is broken. We want to help make it better.
Quite a few of the commenters got the wrong end of the stick here, I think. Read the post carefully
They didnt buy the code, they bought 10 patents. How these patents relate to their own current work, we dont even know. Which elements of those patents they will actually implement is hinted at by their CEO, but again, we dont really know.
Generally speaking, being a company that tries to reinvent the inbox, having 10 patents added to your IP at a pretty low price doesnt seem like too bad an idea to me
Note to self: refresh page before writing your comment….
good pick up-still slowing my outlook {seesmic_video:{”url_thumbnail”:{”value”:”http://t.seesmic.com/thumbnail/D2glZ938iM_th1.jpg”}”title”:{”value”:”good pick up-still slowing my outlook ”}”videoUri”:{”value”:”http://www.seesmic.com/video/JthRj0clhc”}}}
I don´t see much future to this application. It clearly slows the process.
My inbox is just fine. Xobni doesn’t really solve the issue. MSFT will fix it themselves. Goodbye.
One of the common thread between Firedrop (Zaplet) -> MetricStream and Xobni is Vinod Kholsa. Kleiner Perkins was a major investor in Firedrop / MetricStream and Khosla was a board member. Now in Xobni Khosla has invested thro’ Khosla Ventures ..
Well, as one of the names listed on one of the patents, I think I can chime in. I am still a firm believer in what Zaplet was trying to do. I agree with one of the early posters… it just got too complicated. I wanted to keep it simple. Unforunately, the screenshots in the article don’t show the last design which was very well done. I’d like to give kudos to Xobni for recognizing the value. The key to solving some of the Zaplet problems is exactly what Xobni has to offer – access to Outlook. Once a plug in is installed a lot of the security and ‘blocking’ issues would be solved.
I always wanted to revive Zaplet but just never got off my butt.
John
As I said earlier, I am working in conjunction with metricstream and I do have a niche area that I feel it is a perfect fit for. I have looked at a lot of vendors to solve the problem I am having and I always fall back to zaplet. If you want to talk let me know
Interesting folks mention how the Gmail email system works when talking about Zaplet. One of the founders of Zaplet is the PM for Gmail.
I loved that product — it solved so many of my companies creative problems in hosting conversations inside a live e-mail. We used it to communicate with our team members.