Xobni builds a social email contact manager (rebranded as Smartr) that integrates email and social networks into enriched, searchable contact profiles. Its plugin integrates LinkedIn, Twitter, Yahoo Mail, Facebook, Skype, Hoovers and other sources into Outlook, while the Smartr Cloud extracts contacts from phone email data and social networks. Each contact profile aggregates photo, job title, phone numbers, company details, email history and common contacts. Xobni has launched Android, Gmail and iOS apps alongside its long‑standing Outlook plugin. The iOS app has recorded 300,000 downloads since its January launch, and the Outlook plugin has over 10 million downloads. The company disclosed a $10 million financing tied to a commercial partnership, bringing total funding to $42 million, and said the partner agreement will be disclosed as products roll out. Xobni is a plugin for Microsoft Outlook that enriches email with social and contact data from LinkedIn, Twitter, Yahoo Mail, Facebook, Skype, Hoovers and more. Its core offerings include the Outlook plugin, a BlackBerry app that ranks contacts by importance and pulls in social data, and Xobni One, a cloud service that syncs desktop Outlook contacts with mobile contacts. The company reports 5 million downloads of its plugin to date. Xobni charges users for Xobni One, which the article cites as one of several revenue streams. The new funding will be used for further product development, more mobile apps, and expansion of the plugin into other email platforms beyond Outlook. Xobni previously took an investment from the BlackBerry Partners Fund and recently launched its BlackBerry app and the Xobni One syncing product. Xobni builds an Outlook email plug-in that surfaces smarter-email features for professionals and corporate users. The company reports its plug-in has been downloaded more than 1.5 million times. CEO Jeff Bonforte says roughly 70% of users are professionals and corporate users in North America, and the company has a deliberate corporate focus. Xobni has been fielding strong demand to license its software for corporate environments and sees licensing as a business path beyond advertising. The company was in acquisition talks with Microsoft last year, though nothing resulted. Prior financings total a little more than $4 million raised before this round, with the last round in March 2007.

Total raised

$33M

Funding rounds

3

Latest round

Equity

Latest activity

Feb 2012