Xobni Opens Outlook to Developers via OpenSocial API
May 3rd, 2011 | Published in Google OpenSocial
At Xobni, we’ve long been fans and part of the OpenSocial community and are pumped to be bringing this philosophy to Microsoft Outlook.
As the leading add-on for Outlook, the Xobni team has invested years learning how to live nicely in the software. It sure ain’t easy, and it’s not been cheap, but it’s worth it.
The average Outlook user spends north of 30% of their day in email. So we’ve got some pretty incredible real estate on the 7 million installs of Xobni. The rest of user’s computer time is spent bouncing back and forth between browsers, software and services. To chip away at this bounce, we began bringing third party content directly into Outlook via the Xobni sidebar in 2009. We started with Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter. These gadgets are still a favorite feature among our users – and play to Bill Gates’ statement in 2008 that Xobni is “the next generation of social networking.”
Today, we’re unveiling the OpenSocial-powered Xobni Gadget Store, providing developers with an easier path into Outlook. We believe that this will enhance users’ productivity and engagement with the services they use and love, and let developers benefit from our experience (good and bad) in Outlook.
Xobni Gadget Store = OpenSocial + Contextual Gadgets + Xobni Data
Xobni has created an OpenSocial container on top of the interesting data Xobni already discovers for you from your email. Basically, Xobni knows who you know – and how important they are to you (Xobni Rank). This effectively means that we build a social graph from your inbox, and provide access to that graph to your trusted services through the OpenSocial API. Gadgets can be viewed in the Xobni sidebar (“profile” view) or in the email message body (“card” view, similar to the Gmail contextual gadget implementation).
Here are a handful of the 20 gadgets announced today that are now available in the new Xobni Gadget Store. Each gadget offers a personalized experience based on the related email or profile.
- Evernote – take and search for notes on a person or company, and have your notes automatically associated with their email address or Xobni profile.
- Dropbox – quickly choose files to share with anyone in your inbox
- JIRA – Get a real-time view of any bug mentioned or linked to in an email. Make edits to the bug, add comments, re-assign, and more – without leaving Outlook.
- Salesforce – Create a Salesforce contact or lead from any Xobni profile; view existing records as well.
- WebEx – Schedule a one-click meeting or schedule a meeting in advance without needing to leave Outlook. See upcoming meetings and quickly send reminders to the tardy folks
We’re proud to be the first company to bring OpenSocial platform to Outlook in a meaningful way. We believe that extending the reach of the OpenSocial community to the hundreds of millions of users in Outlook is exciting and look forward to seeing what a more open Outlook future brings.
We’re hosting an event at our offices in San Francisco, CA the day before Google I/O open to all developers interested in hacking and exploring how to work their product or services into Outlook in a meaningful way. The event/hack is May 9 from 2:00 – 6:00pm. Some developers will be offered the opportunity to present their hack to the guests, including judges Michael Arrington/TechCrunch, Joseph Smarr/Google and David Lee/SV Angel. Space is limited. RSVP here.
Developers unable to attend, but interested about learning more about creating Xobni Gadgets can visit http://www.xobni.com/developer/.
Posted on behalf of Xobni, by Mark Weitzel, President, OpenSocial Foundaiton
Posted on behalf of Xobni, by Mark Weitzel, President, OpenSocial Foundaiton