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:

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!

Updates seem to average twice a month.  You can find Raj’s blog here.