Super charge your Microsoft Outlook and add social media to your inbox
Xobni is a plugin for Microsoft Outlook that puts a new spin on the way you view your contacts. You might have guessed already, but Xobni is inbox spelled backwards. The name xobni is appropriate because this service offers a cool new way of managing your Outlook contacts and other aspect of your existing email information.
The Xobni plugin has been downloaded over 3 million times since their initial debut in 2006. There is both a free version of Xobni, and a paid premium version. The free version of Xobni comes with the following features:
- View contact info & photos from LinkedIn, Facebook, Skype, and Hoover’s
- Find attachments by contact
- Find links sent in emails by contact
- Lightning fast Search of email and people (Other emails from the selected contact will appear)
- View common contacts and conversations
Xobni Plus comes with all of these features and more, and the advertising is removed.
For a more in depth look at how Xobni works check out this product demo their team put together:
Bill Gates was so impressed with Xobni in Febuary of 2008 he demoed the product at the Office Developers Conference. His demo from the conference is embedded below:
According to the CrunchBase, Xobni has received $14.6 million in funding to date. This degree of funding should help ensure that the technology Xobni is producing remains cutting edge. One example of this is a Salesforce extension that Xobni recently launched that allows Salesforce-specific data to be viewed inside of Outlook.
Xobni claims to have a presence in 80% of Fortune 500 companies thanks to employee adoption outside of the traditional I.T. infrastructure.
If you have any further questions about Xobni I recommend you follow the @xobni Twitter account and ask them directly. If you do you might even catch cool tweets like the one below, which includes a link to a limited beta of xobni that is coming soon to blackberry devices.
What’s in store for the future of Xobni? Well you can sign up for an invite to the Xobni blackberry beta of course, and expect future Xobni integration with webmail platforms like Gmail, and even eventually with iPhones.
Beyond Microsoft Outlook
Xobni is an excellent tool for managing your existing contacts in Outlook, but when it comes to any kind of email marketing campaign strategy, it’s simply not the right tool. Sure, you can get plugins for Outlook to use for email marketing but, it simply isn’t effective. If you are thinking of using Outlook for email campaign management, you first should check out our section about Outlook in our guide for email marketing newbees! As well, listen to this podcast interview from Janine Popick, who talks about the transition from Outlook to an Email Service Prodiver.
Takeaway: Xobni is a powerful tool for managing your Outlook contacts and it’s worth checking out either the free version or the premium version.
Feedback
What do you think of Xobni? We’d love it if you’d let us know your thoughts in the comments below!
Thanks for the comment Jeff! I was not aware of the schedule a meeting feature.
I found this Video of Xobni founder Adam Smith at Startup Bootcamp talking about Xobni that some people might find cool: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FqrRSsvZNNU
I once used Xobni switched to Lookeen since it had a better search function in my opinion. However, the social features seem quite interesting. Should give it a try…
Thanks for the tip on Lookeen, it looks like a great tool if searching Outlook is the goal!
I used to use Xonbni and stopped. Upon Garin’s recommendation I downloaded it and tried it again.
The feature I like the most is the schedule a meeting. It sends an email to a contact and pastes in your upcoming free time. This way someone can reply back with what time works best for them.
It’s a real time saver. I recommend giving it a try.