Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Xobni - a waste of money

greatapps.blogspot.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 66 posts

Re: Xobni - a waste of money

#51

Post by bluelu »

tx wrote: post #3

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'…

Feature 1: 1 day work
Feature 2: 1 week work

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.

Re: Xobni - a waste of money

#52

Post by angstrom »

nreece wrote: post #48
angstrom wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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.

Yeah, from what I understand it was buried to avoid competing with windows live desktop search.

Re: Xobni - a waste of money

#53

Post by angstrom »

tocomment wrote: post #50

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?

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.

Re: Xobni - a waste of money

#54

Post by aswanson »

Tichy wrote: post #8
gruseom wrote: post #2

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 frequen…

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 proba…

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

hominen makes this hilariously recursive.

Re: Xobni - a waste of money

#55

Post by mrtron »

edw519 wrote: post #25
mrtron wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would dare criticize YC startups (but not this one since I know absolutely nothing about it). If I got banned from here for doing so I would start a competitive site out of revenge...because that would be ridiculous. Or have a lightsaber dual with pg, I would leave the choice to him. I warn you I would be wearing spandex during the latter though.

I dare not criticize you in spandex (because I know absolutely nothing about you), but still, I vote for Option a.

I was hoping someone would put together the spandex and the name and get the guy in the white spandex Tron outfit that was hopefully a Halloween costume :)

Re: Xobni - a waste of money

#56

Post by [deleted] »

Tichy wrote: post #8
gruseom wrote: post #2

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 frequen…

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 proba…

[deleted]

Re: Xobni - a waste of money

#57

Post by mattmaroon »

jamiequint wrote: post #29
fleaflicker wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

not to mention that a sub $20M sale on $4.2M investment would not be seen favorably at all by the investors sitting on the board.

Right. I don't know what their premoney was, but it had to be in the 8-10 range I'd guess. VCs don't approve 2x returns.

Re: Xobni - a waste of money

#58

Post by edawerd »

angstrom wrote: post #47
tx wrote: post #3

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'…

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.

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?!"

Re: Xobni - a waste of money

#59

Post by Prrometheus »

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.

Re: Xobni - a waste of money

#60

Post by Tichy »

aswanson wrote: post #54
Tichy wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 proba…

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

how so?
Post reply on HN