Stop What You Are Doing & Install This Plug-In: Rapportive
Cambridge UK startup Rapportive has released a Firefox and Chrome extension that will replace the ads in your Gmail with photos, biographic data and social media links, including a live display of recent Tweets, for whoever you're corresponding with by email. It's fantastic and takes about 2 minutes to set up.
The three person team behind Rapportive queries data provider Rapleaf for the social media profile data and does some local caching for performance optimization. Let's stop talking about it though - just go download it! Check out the screenshot and details below.
Trusting the Service
You don't need to give Rapportive your Gmail credentials, the service asks you to login via secure Google Federated Login, or OpenID. The startup doesn't have access to your password, but it does access the contents of your email - that's how it builds a service for you to use. Any browser extension has access to everything you do on the web, but I expect some people will feel a little nervous about installing a webmail related extension from a small company. I don't think that concern is warranted enough to justify missing out on this awesome service.
The company says that if your details are inaccurate you can visit Rapleaf and correct them.
Inbox as Platform
Rapportive is developing a platform for the development of custom applets that other companies can integrate within their local data stores so you can look up an email sender on your own system as part of the Rapportive display. Co-founder Rahul Vohra says such integration takes minutes to set up and in the long term the company hopes to create a marketplace for those applets. Team collaboration so notes left on contacts can be shared is also in the works, as is integration with popular paid CRM and customer service systems.
Rapportive was first reported on by The Next Web this morning.
I've been hoping to find something like this for a long time.
Share
Facebook
Comments
Subscribe to comments for this post OR Subscribe to comments for all ReadWriteWeb posts
Interesting, didn't know it queried Rapleaf - will update. Thanks
I can't imagine Google is going to be happy a company is replacing its ads with any content, regardless of how useful it is. I imagine this company get blocked/removed from gmail and/or sued pretty soon.
Re Jamie -
I have to agree with you - I cannot see this staying around for too long, the folks at "Don't Be Evil" will likely find a way to disallow it somehow.
It takes a portion of their revenue away - which they say is why you get gmail for free.
Mark
Well if nothing else, I am relieved to see that my mother is not on any social networks.
I like the general idea here, but why cheat Google? They're providing a really valuable, well developed service. The ads are the price you pay.
This headline comes off as "Stop what you're doing and remove one of Google's only ways of monetizing Gmail." I know there is plenty to debate in terms of whether a geek audience like ReadWriteWeb's will even click on an ad in Gmail in the first place, and let's not forget ad blockers either.
But what if Lifehacker or TechCrunch wrote about a plugin that replaced all of RWW's ads with lolcat photos? Or Twitter widgets? Would you jump on it with the same zeal?
I love the concept of getting more functionality out of an email client as flexible and extensible as Gmail. But Google is in the same bucket as many of us in that advertising is one of a very, very small handful of options for running a business online. This stuff, along with ad blockers and the like, flies directly in the face of that unfortunate reality.
Re hiding the ads: I hear ya and I certainly don't use AdBlock for example. But come on, this functionality is SO AWESOME that the impact on Google's infinite supply of cash just doesn't seem important.
Well, now that's amazing! I wonder how would google react to this hit to their revenue in this crisis time :)
Great idea! The people google makes money off wouldn't find out about this, so not much of a loss for google.
I'm a big fan of improving email, and this certainly seems to do it by putting useful information next to a message. But I'm wary of giving a third-party access to my email content when I know nothing about the company.
Specifically, I don't see on their site:
A) a privacy policy
B) information about the company
C) last names of the individuals whose emails are listed
So, overall, I'm not sure why I should use a plugin when there's such a noticeable lack of transparency -- even standard business practices -- on the part of the creator. Definitely not nearly enough to make me stop what I'm doing and install it.
Follow-up (quick response!):
Martin Kleppman of Rapportive replied to me on Twitter
"...we'll be putting up a trustworthy privacy policy soon. We weren't expecting all that press today - caught us by surprise!"
http://twitter.com/martinkl/status/9990204177
This extension is inspiring me to use my gmail as my main e-mail account.
Rapportive guys: Your browser detection is broken under Firefox 3.5 on Ubuntu. It's not letting us install.
Greg,
Thanks for the feedback. I'm one of the co-founders of Rapportive.
Please accept our sincere apologies for the lack of transparency; we put this up to show some friends and it got picked up by the press. Now, we're moving as fast as we can.
We don't have a privacy policy other than "treat folks right"; for us a good approximation of that is "treat folks how we want to be treated".
You're absolutely right: we should write down exactly what we mean by that. For example, the bodies of your emails never leave your browser.
A bit more about us. Rapportive is based in Cambridge, UK. We're crazy-passionate about excellent service, which is what drove us to attack this problem.
We've been doing start-ups for a while. You can find out more about me here: http://uk.linkedin.com/in/rahulvohra, http://twitter.com/rahulvohra, http://facebook.com/rahul.vohra
My co-founders have more organised online lives: http://samstokes.co.uk and http://martin.kleppmann.de
Does that help?
Best,
Rahul
http://uk.linkedin.com/in/rahulvohra
http://twitter.com/rahulvohra
http://facebook.com/rahul.vohra
Gabe: thanks, we're on it!
@David C: Do you think Google will still be serving text or display ads in the next 5 years? I have never ONCE clicked on a GMail ad. Most business/universities SMB etc. that provide GMail do it without the ads (at some cost for private business). If Google can provide services like Sites, GTalk, Voice and private-branded gmail without ads now, I think plain GMail context ads might be on their way out soon, too. Other services will follow. These companies are going to need to get creative real soon. For example, the founders of LucyPhone.com are not too interested in displaying ads to the services users. Tom Oristan said that (paraphrasing) they might do that if there are some REALLY hyper-context opportunities, but it would not be the norm. They are focused on building a service that users want to use, then offering it to businesses to offer to their current or potential customers. Imagine if Dell had a LucyPhone widget right on their front page. They would probably see a huge surge in customer engagement. Companies will be willing to pay for value like that, without forcing useless, dead ads down our eyesockets. Anyone got other ideas on what the future holds for traditional dislay or text ads?
@joelgibby
BTW - got asked to take a survey from CrowdScience but when I clicked I got "Page Cannot be Displayed"
Please delete this comment if you fix it and don't need the stuff down there \/ any more. Thanks!
http://app.crowdscience.com/redirect/?plan=21069&guid=fe501caae51d958fb2d5c4231c2f7138&vguid=c8e93df74e489b1&sc=eNotjbEOwjAMBf/Fc2T52XHs5G9QJESnVrSIAfHvgOhyuunuRZd5p6EwlkDV9D+z0D6vNMBSaHue8rgtx07DrFuvzgr0dIQXmsdKQ1hEDQ3popGuNRCF1t+AA1K/XXXL0Nby/QETURyS&rt=__cst_11=en-us__cst_12=__qseg%3DQ_D%3B%20__qca%3DP0-393060042-1267738253829%3B%20__utma%3D54706984.1331663160.1267738254.1267738254.1267738254.1%3B%20__utmb%3D54706984.13.9.1267739352883%3B%20__utmc%3D54706984%3B%20__utmz%3D54706984.1267738254.1.1.utmcsr%3D(direct)%7Cutmccn%3D(direct)%7Cutmcmd%3D(none)%3B%20wooTracker%3DOZ89KQR8ARAW7QMGMCJIOSMG3446557T%3B%20wooMeta%3DNTc4ODc5NiYzJjYmOTEwODk3JjEyNjc3MzgyNTQwNjImMTI2NzczOTM1MzExNCYmMTAwJiY0MDAwNjMmKioqKioqKioqKioqKioqJiYm%3B%20__csref%3Dhttp%253A%2F%2Fwww.readwriteweb.com%2F%3B%20__cst%3Dc197e17b424ee0a2%3B%20__csv%3Dc8e93df74e489b1%3B%20PHPSESSID%3Di81067k810i1dtmvvgq34jb5t6%3B%20enqp%3D6e1aa84d46878c9e7abfd681a058404f%3B%20enqs%3D1da2030c1e7260cddff99d3f30522d36%3B%20_csoot%3D1267739355836%3B%20a95b455141f1c76d40987560fb514c1a%3Dda96bd5fe062ec54fef05e48c6dadf2c%3B%20a95b455141f1c76d40987560fb514c1a_user%3D782142703%3B%20a95b455141f1c76d40987560fb514c1a_ss%3D97dFyba_l4Wzc0jFxcXSkQ__%3B%20a95b455141f1c76d40987560fb514c1a_session_key%3D3.AREDMuygk7arf3pUVzz28A__.3600.1267743600-782142703%3B%20a95b455141f1c76d40987560fb514c1a_expires%3D1267743600%3B%20mt_commenter%3DsE2MMumkDtMqkPifspItoQp9n9Sl5q3i9wPHlDjN%3B%20commenter_name%3DJoel%3B%20commenter_auth_type%3DTwitter%3B%20commenter_userpic%3Dhttp%253A%252F%252Fa1.twimg.com%252Fprofile_images%252F730779236%252FJoel-cropped_normal.jpg%3B%20mtcmtauth%3B%20mtcmtmail%3B%20mtcmthome%3B%20commenter_id%3B%20__csh%3D1%3B%20fbsetting_a95b455141f1c76d40987560fb514c1a%3D%257B%2522connectState%2522%253A1%252C%2522oneLineStorySetting%2522%253A3%252C%2522shortStorySetting%2522%253A3%252C%2522inFacebook%2522%253Afalse%257D__cst_13=-1__cst_14=www.readwriteweb.com__cst_15=true__cst_16=Win32__cst_17=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.readwriteweb.com%2F__cst_18=16__cst_19=800x600__cst_20=Mozilla%2F4
Hope that junk don't break the page. Once you've copied it, delete it. I just posted here because it's the page that had the survey.
Rapportive is simply awesome (good call Marshall). We desperately need tools to get past the Dunbar number and be able to cope with hundreds/thousands of online relationships. Just having a simple note field I can use to remind me where things are in the relationship is great.
I hope Google does the right thing here: acquire Rapportive, put incomprehensible Buzz to sleep, slightly rearrange the page so they can sell ads and we can manage our relationships.
Holy crap! This is awesome!
Once again, great find, Marshall.
This is a great extension. I do side with all the people who are talking about stepping on Google Ads, and I think that there are ways of presenting the information without replacing the ads.
Still, this is very useful!
This is not cheating Google.
They created their framework. If they dont like this, they will disallow it at the expense of their own architecture.
What I would imagine they do is both. Allow this, and serve ads. Contextual ads are icky IMO when it comes to email anyhow.
And they still have the real assets - all your damn data. Everything you do. The Evil Empire will wear the face of data, not ads!
;)
I like this and have begun to use it immediately.
I think many users see no value in the text ads or already block them with extensions like adblock, better gmail, or various greasemonkey scripts. None of the providers of those apps have been sued by Google (AFAIK)
For those stuck in Outlook you may like to try the Xobni add-on (if you aren't locked down) which pulls profile and pics from FB and LinkedIn
Jesus! guys, what's wrong with a few ads in return for an awesome free service?
Does anyone know how I can view the results for my own e-mail address? Sending an e-mail to myself doesn't seem to work.
I had to turn off the Better Gmail 2 extension in Chrome to get this to work.
Matt, hover over the word "me" in the top of an email.
@Greg:
Every plugin you install has access to every page you visit. So there is actually *more* transparency behind this one that most in that they particularly alert you to it. Just because a plugin supposedly has nothing to do with gmail doesn't mean it isn't being sneaky and sending your emails out to a remote server anyway, or doing something else with them that you never agreed to.
You are only questing the plugin authors who are specifically alerting you to this security issue. Seems backwards to me.
I agree that while it's bad form to slop on top of ads or other revenue generating real-estate, this also seems to be in the spirit of Google Labs (albeit third party) innovations and drove me, at least, to think again about switching over to Chrome full time in lieu of Gmail via Mail.app.
I suspect a compromise can be found and will have to be. Bad business to let even super-cool plugins swamp your business model long-term. Short-term though, it's a win for Google and may, in a customer acquisition sense, be profitable for them.
Frankly, I'm wondering about a way to opt out of such a service. While I believe it's an interesting notion, I'm not comfortable with my data, social networking or otherwise, showing up in someone's sidebar. Not everyone I correspond with is a friend mor do they need to see, at a glance, my social footprint. (And, yes, I do protect my tweets and such, but the idea is still somewhat unsettling.)
I've said over and over that client-side context is the future. This is just the beginning - be sure to watch what Kynetx is doing. They're building an entire platform for developers to be able to create these types of apps.
Posted by: Jesse Stay
|
March 7, 2010 1:18 AM
Mailplane users: the latest preview integrates Rapportive: http://mailplaneapp.com/download/preview/
Everybody else: if you're on Mac, use Gmail, but don't know about MailPlane, check it out: http://mailplaneapp.com
My favourite feature is drag and drop uploading. Even works with multiple files.
I shared some concerns about rapportive on a buzz thread yesterday. after some correspondence w scott and martin from the company, I wrote up a blog post http://btrandolph.com/2010/03/rapportive-overexposing-users/ two main concerns - difficult/impossible to edit what's showing up and lack of knowledge among majority that their social graph is on display to gmail correspondents. feedback indicates the former will be corrected soon, but still wondering about the latter. please comment with your thoughts on the post!
I think the use of this plugin would be a breach of of the user Terms Of Service.... so I would stay clear of it.
Sounds great! And as I can see some people have tried it and liked it. i'm not an expert so I'm not gonna argue if it is google cheating but If it's gonna help us remove these stupid adverts, I'm in.
Sounds great! It also sounds very much like Xobni for Outlook and I am an desktop mail client kind of guy...
Posted by: openid.dipot.com
|
March 31, 2010 2:02 AM
Gmail contextual gadgets are likely to render this service obsolete in short order. You can check out Appirio's example of these gadgets in the Google Campfire One video on YouTube.
This is an awesome idea, not just for removing irritating adverts but developing additional connections with contacts. What a shame it is limited to Googlemail account holders! My main email is Hotmail, so all my social media links don't appear. In fact, when I send an email it links me to a MySpace account which I know nothing about which is odd! But here's hoping this plug-in is developed as I can see this being so useful.
@samontheweb
From what I can tell, few if any people actually understand what Google's business model really is. Ads definitely are one such revenue stream, but information is king of them all.
If you haven't recently, or even ever for that matter, read Google's Privacy Policy, they have right to scan your emails, archive them, profile them, create aggregate statistics based on the words used, the phrases, tone, etc. They basically take all the information from everywhere and anywhere in that email and monetize it through indirect streams. Whether that be trends on where to launch a new app, or see spikes in something like Facebook broadcast emails, and then in turn decide to invest in such ventures.
The information they get by people using their service in massive quantities as we have, is ridiculously more valuable than the ads shown on the page. So, when apps like this decide to remove them, but they end up getting valuable information about the app itself and how it interacts, my guess is Google will allow it, but start reviewing the data itself that Rapportive puts on the page for their own purposes.
In any case, great idea, but not sure whether I am ready to reveal all my contacts names and email addresses to any company. As well as ping off to Rapportive each time I open an email from that person. These things can be fixed and rearchitected in such a way that they relieve my concerns, but as it stands it doesn't sit well enough with me to release such information.
@nshbrown