Xoopit, the email-enhancement service that helps you locate files, images and videos in your inbox, is getting a potentially big shot in the arm with the launch of Yahoo Mail’s application platform today.
Previously, Xoopit was only available to Gmail users who were proactive enough to install a Firefox plugin. But with the opening up of Yahoo Mail, Xoopit will now have more immediate access that webmail service’s 275 million monthly global users. And the company won’t have to hijack Yahoo Mail to do it, as it has essentially done with Gmail – Xoopit will be presented nicely in a Yahoo application gallery for easy installation.
This may be the opportunity for Xoopit to transform itself from a neat plugin into a widely-used tool that many people learn they can’t live their digital lives without. And we can expect many other productivity tools to follow suit, since Yahoo Mail’s application platform is focused more on serious tasks than finding better ways to poke your friends, which is often the case on social networks like Facebook. WordPress is another example of a productivity tool that hopes that to spur more usage by grabbing users’ attention during their daily (or hourly) email routine.
Xoopit is still exploring paths to profitability but says that Yahoo is exceedingly open to discussing ways that developers can monetize its platform. Details aren’t available yet on how Yahoo plans to do this exactly, but Yahoo may allow developers to display advertisements within Yahoo Mail and even offer to split revenue on their own advertisements somewhere down the road.
Google has yet to open Gmail to developers, although its Gmail Labs platform suggests that it will get there in time. AOL has also begun to open up.
On the flip side, startups like Zenbe and Postbox should be getting worried right about now.
Could you guys stop being Yahoo PR’s bitch already.
I’m spending more time on other sites since you guys have jumped into bed w/Sunnyvale.
Yahoo is total awsum now that Jerry’s gone.
I think like as Alex S. Would you please be a real?
I have to disagree with the previous two commentators. I believe this site is here to provide the public with the most up-to-date information in technology, even if it comes from a company others may not like. Not announcing the latest news would be more biased. I for one will keep coming back, and if there is a post I don’t like, I will skip to the next one. Thanks for the update
While I usually enjoy TC, maybe keep stories on ho-hum products to 1 per day, max. No need for 2 posts within a few hours on the same old Yahoo stuff.
To the 1st poster’s point: You guy’s didn’t cover the Yahoo layoffs, but this thing get’s lots of attention along with every other minor launch coming out of Yahoo HQ for the past few months. Pretty strange. Editorial credibility is waning. Do the right thing guys.
We didn’t cover the layoffs?
Hey Mark, gotta agree with Jerry on this one. That story is about a taco truck sideshow. It would have behooved you guys to cover which groups were cut and the company’s plans now that they put some people out of a job. What’s different at Yahoo now?
The taco thing was a cute distraction, but hardly qualifies as covering the real story IMO.
If you call that covering the story, it’s a piss-poor job.
I think he has you in a figure-four leglock on that one. Time to tap out.
http://www.yout...feature=related
That looks like it hurts
You bet it hurts. That’s the Nature Boy. You don’t want to mess with the nature boy…unless you have Mr. Perfect in your corner brining the Perfect-Plex.
Not sure why you guys do not discuss the concern that you need to give them your email password to use the service and how that could be a huge issue.
So many times Companies say they will protect it and do not.
Good point, but I think (& hope) Yahoo learned their lesson after getting the Chinese reporter jailed. Hopefully they’re holding partners to strict standards as well.
http://www.wire...s/2005/09/68830
http://edition....13/yahoo.china/
to previous posters moaning about the Yahoo coverage : We don’t hear you when updates are made about every single gmail update even the completely useless ones. This is a tech site, if you want detailed coverage of layoffs, go see a finance news site. And tech exists outside of Google, fortunately.
How anyone can trash-talk one of the techcrunch authors for “being yahoo’s bitch” is frankly beyond me. Mike’s been very critical in many, many posts about their direction as a company, and rightly so.
Still, as a dedicated Yahoo! Mail user, I’m happy to see some great innovation shining through in the midst of all the depression.
I have used xoopit and others, they look like they do the job but still there is a huge room for improvement.
)
here is a screenshot of what could Gmail have: its called Gmail File Manager (I called it
http://www.flic...870986/sizes/o/
This is for Gmail, but similar concept can be developed for Yahoo, Hotmail, etc.
I hope I knew some developers with whom I could team up to work on something like this.
Xoopit is one of the most useful addons I have ever used in gmail. How you have gmail and not xoopit is beyond me? They are like a lost and found for photos, videos and files. The only thing missing is to unzip the files and display contents. Other than that they are fantastic.
How do you pronouce Xoopit ?
I think you use voice ‘Z’ instead of ‘X’ in the beginning. Basically it must sound like Zoopit.
typo in penultimate paragraph – change “their” to “there”.
Otherwise v interesting post.
Ugh, somebody activated some new e-mail functionality on my Yahoo account. (Looks like version 1 of their social networking foray.) It might be this stuff you mentioned above. Whatever the case, my e-mail is now ridiculously slow.
I miss the days when Yahoo was a good company and asked if you wanted to use their beta functionality.
Same thing happened to my GF. She had the new Yahoo homepage, which annoyed her, and this afternoon she was telling me her email changed a bit (it must be this feature/flaw).
Both the beta homepage and mail do not have a “go back to old version” button. So I just showed her how to switch to Google and she’s a happy camper
What about privacy concern? Does anybody else find it scary that Xoopit is scraping through your email and opening attachments? What kind of privacy model is in place for the Yahoo mail application platform?
Howard, this is the web, and you have free will. I find this the same issue as using any service that uses POP3 or IMAP to consolidate mail (like Zimbra, etc.). I will make the judgement call on a case by case basis. In the case of Xoopit, since it is using a Yahoo-supplied security framework that isn’t web scraping using my ID and Password (from what I saw in the demo), I think it is better than most.
Hey BT,
I get your point, but what I am more worried is the fact that Yahoo is now giving 3P applications potential access to my emails, whether I install these applications or not.
Yahoo Mail’s application platform seems similar to Facebook’s application platform at first glance, but it’s not. I can control what I put on my Facebook account, so what an application developer could access is relatively limited.
I don’t have 100% over control what type of “content” these applications will have access to. If my wife emails me her SSN or if my friend emails me an embarrassing photo, these 3P application could potentially access these. Mail data is a lot more sensitive then social graph. That’s what I am concerned about.
If the privacy control and the security mechanism in place for the Yahoo Mail application platform is not air tight, then whether I install a 3P application or not will not necessarily keep my email content safe from said developer. Facebook, for instance, does not allow developers to retrieve contact information via its APIs since they are deemed as “sensitive user information”. Everything about my mail account (address book, emails, attachments, etc.) are more sensitive than what Facebook considers “sensitive”.
Yahoo users have to authorize the Xoopit application and explicitly give Xoopit permission to access email content. Furthermore no username or password is collected. The application uses a combination of BBAuth and OAuth to handle authorization and authentication on the backend and frontend respectively. Its a great model for webmail providers to allow users to add applications and authorize access to content where they want.
Am I biased, or are 6zap’s Zcounts
http://www.6zap.com/zcounts/
more interesting in the email arena?
I tried to get Techcrunch to write about this, but either they didn’t think it was news worthy enough, or they’re just inundated with stories.
Still, I don’t know of anywhere else that you can create email aliases on the fly the way you can with Zcounts.
Xoopit is catching up with 2pad, whose application has been working with Yahoo! for months and we also work with Hotmail and Aol and Mobileme since Techcrunch 50.
It’s interesting this just came out. 2pad has been mining photos from emails for months now. But works on all the email platforms as an independent application..
2pad guys spamming twitter and boards with comments under different IDs. Dudes, give it a rest!
How is this not a story? Yahoo! Mail is one of the most-used platforms online and they’re opening up to third parties. A couple of well-fit examples are mentioned… what’s up with the outrage?