Rapportive is one great tool that's iterating pretty quickly! Looks like someone is putting the VC/angel money to great use. It's the one reason that I don't use Sparrow instead of GMail.
However, the main question again: how will they earn money?
It's a simple formula: build a product that people love, have a basic free version, charge users money for advanced features. The product you see now will most likely stay free forever, but we are planning additional premium features based on what our users are asking for.
The plan is to go freemium: build an amazingly useful product, and charge money for premium features.
I know that startups very commonly say that this is their plan. We've thought very hard about what makes freemium work: http://blog.rapportive.com/is-freemium-right-for-you. We're pretty certain that Rapportive has all the right characteristics.
Yeah, I agree that freemium will work perfectly for you - the use case is there - people who do business via GMail/Google Apps want their social CRM built in right there!
One quick question: the upgrades that we see today (Facebook comments and the like) - will they always be free or will that be a part of the freemium suite at a later date?
Well, sharing cats is not that useful. But, knowing that my potential client loves cat or is currently at a beach/conference or loves the same music - altogether another story! :)
(Slightly OT: I'm happy to chat any entrepreneurs who are thinking about pitching OAF about our experience doing so. I also highly recommend AngelList.)
Every time I'm asked to connect a service to Rapportive I'm extremely impressed by how slick, complete, wholesome and reliable the experience is. I know it's not rocket science, but it is hard to make this simple interaction work with zero drama as a plug-in for many different types of users with different browsers. Well done guys!
I just tried it. It sounded like a very neat idea.
But it didn't really worked. It wasn't able to connect a single contact with its Facebook profile. In one case I checked more details: It seems that he used another mail address in Facebook than I got from him via GMail. So in GMail, I added this other mail adress to the contact in hope that Rapportive could now connect it. But it still couldn't -- it only seemed to check the mail address of the mail but not the other possible addresses of this contact.
What I always missed was some way to manually connect it (in a way of course that it would remind/save that).
Thanks for giving Rapportive a go! If you can, please stick with it: the results will get better over the next 1-2 days. (We know we've got lots of work to do on first user experience, and we're addressing that.)
We're also building features specifically to help spot email addresses belonging to the same people, which would have really helped in this case.
Amazing, Rapportive has made an alliance between FB and Google. Before I try it out, I would like to know how accessible my Gmail contacts become to FB, because Gmail has a different set of contacts than my FB account.
Any plans to be able to post to FB pages? I wish Rapportive was on Kickstarter, where I can afford to be an angel :)
A way to manage FB from my chosen interface -- another stellar idea from Rapportive. But before pushing the button I would like to know, if, as with most things FB,there is a compromise of my privacy for the convenience? Indicating the level to which FB and Gmail will share my contacts would be helpful to have in the introductory information.It sounds like they will be matched together?
I want to be very selective. Ideally all the client FB accounts I manage could be tabbed through via Rapportive without any chance of the contacts getting comingled.
Would be happy to pay for such business conveniences in a freemium model.
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[ 3.3 ms ] story [ 69.0 ms ] threadHowever, the main question again: how will they earn money?
You can see our analysis of freemium business models on the Rapportive blog: http://blog.rapportive.com/is-freemium-right-for-you
Edit: looks like rahulvohra and I had a little race condition here ;-)
And, thanks for the service and the link - I am not quite sure how I missed that post!
I know that startups very commonly say that this is their plan. We've thought very hard about what makes freemium work: http://blog.rapportive.com/is-freemium-right-for-you. We're pretty certain that Rapportive has all the right characteristics.
One quick question: the upgrades that we see today (Facebook comments and the like) - will they always be free or will that be a part of the freemium suite at a later date?
Facebook? Sharing cute cat videos? idk doesn't seem like a business use case to me.
These guys are relentless and I predict they will a huge, huge success in the coming years.
Rapportive is a HUGE part of my daily activity online.
The new Facebook integration will be awesome -- may actually get me to use Facebook more.
The linkedin integration was already Great! @KimaVentures
But it didn't really worked. It wasn't able to connect a single contact with its Facebook profile. In one case I checked more details: It seems that he used another mail address in Facebook than I got from him via GMail. So in GMail, I added this other mail adress to the contact in hope that Rapportive could now connect it. But it still couldn't -- it only seemed to check the mail address of the mail but not the other possible addresses of this contact.
What I always missed was some way to manually connect it (in a way of course that it would remind/save that).
We're also building features specifically to help spot email addresses belonging to the same people, which would have really helped in this case.
Does that help?
I want to be very selective. Ideally all the client FB accounts I manage could be tabbed through via Rapportive without any chance of the contacts getting comingled.
Would be happy to pay for such business conveniences in a freemium model.