Xobni's Smartr for Gmail less intelligent than Rapportive

By Craig Fisher | craig fisher, First Impressions, fishdogs, LinkedIn, Rapportive, Social CRM, Social Media, Social Networking, Statistics | 4 comments | | 0

How well do you know your email contacts?

Today Xobni released its social intelligence app, Smartr, for Gmail. I was interested to see if it would work for me as a compliment to, or even “smarter” replacement for Rapportive.

I have been using Rapportive since early Summer as a social profile viewer/CRM inside my Gmail inbox. It helps me connect with, and visualize recent activity of, people in my inbox. Here is a pretty good Mashable write-up of Rapportive: http://mashable.com/2011/07/15/rapportive-compose/

I installed Smartr today only to find it to be dumber than Rapportive. At lease for me, at least for now. It could be that it takes time for the app to get to know me. But in a side by side comparison of data for contacts I have recently emailed, Rapportive was better able to show profile data and connection to me.

Smartr missed on Linkedin profiles several times, showing “no matches”. It did, however, in a couple of cases, show me Facebook profile data of a contact where Rapportive did not.

Smartr also boasts some unique features around relationship history (in gmail, not IRL). But it does not have a place to take notes on that contact like Rapportive does.

I will give Xobni more time to work out the bugs and process my inbox. I’m going to keep both going for now because they each offer really cool insight into your contacts social activity and message history. We’ll see if Smartr gets smarter with age. I’ll keep you posted.

Do you have a different experience with these tools? Let me know in the comments.

Xobni Brings “Smartr” Social Intelligence Apps to Gmail & Androidfrom Mashable by Jennifer Van Grove
Social intelligence startup Xobni first found favor with Outlook and BlackBerry users. Tuesday, the company is extending its contact management and productivity capabilities to those with Gmail accounts and Android devices.

The Gmail and Android applications, branded under a new product suite called Smartr, are designed to give users a complete picture of the people they email or communicate with via mobile.

Smartr Inbox for Gmail, the official release of Xobni’s private beta Gmail application, is a social intelligence sidebar for your Gmail or Google Apps account that works as you read and consume email. It’s available on Safari, Firefox and Chrome.

In the inbox view, the sidebar displays a grid of photos to highlight the people you communicate with the most. You can hover over photos for a quick glimpse at the person or click a photo to view a full profile.
You can also filter the view for a Facebook or Twitter-centric view of your contacts.

In the message view, the sidebar zeroes in on your communication history with a single contact, grabs the person’s recent social updates from Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn, and digs up contact information from previous email messages.

Smartr Contacts for Android also launches in public beta Tuesday. The product is meant to re-envision the mobile phone address book and take it from a context-less contact list to something infinitely more intuitive.

The app analyzes data in your phone and on online networks. It promises to keep contact information up-to-date, allow for better search, rank contacts by importance and show you a contact’s profile with latest photos, company info, message history and social updates.

A similar application for iPhone is slated for release later this year.

Sean December 19, 2012 at 9:32 pm

How about the new Alto from AOL? I've been using it for a few days and it looks promising. Will be a huge winner if they come with an iPad/iPhone App that allows one to add corporate exchange accounts!
Anonymous April 18, 2012 at 9:04 pm

I dont agree with you. See this article –

http://www.gtricks.com/gmail-tricks/xobni-smartr-vs-rapportive/
chauzer March 23, 2012 at 1:06 am

I think Rapportive is better when you went to see that info for new contacts, people you don't know. But Smartr is good at showing you all the social data from your current contacts. I decided to turn off Rapportive and only use Smartr now. I like that it shows statistics between you and each contact too.
Fishdogs September 28, 2011 at 4:14 am

Noteworthy: Xobni contacted me right away on Twitter after I posted this article to Google+. That shows some social intelligence!

10:50pm via Twitter for iPhone
@Fishdogs appreciate the feedback and would love to her more about your experience with Smartr Inbox. Can you DM us your contact info?

Xobni's Smartr for Gmail less intelligent than Rapportive

Xobni's Smartr for Gmail less intelligent than Rapportive

How well do you know your email contacts?

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