
The story of Rapportive (YC S10) - 'social CRM' plugin that replaces Gmail ads - waderoush
http://www.xconomy.com/san-francisco/2010/08/23/rapportives-social-crm-gmail-plugin-makes-e-mail-social-again/
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jacquesm
There's something funny about the whole rapportive story, google at some point
will notice, then they have to make a decision, allow this to set precedent
which will open the floodgates to similar trickery or build a 'rapportive
detector' in to their system which will most likely result in stopping
rapportive from working. I have all kinds of questions about this strategy.

I'm sure that rapportive has thought this through, but is there any official
response on this?

And the other side of the ledger, what if google does decide to go after them,
how will they deal with the backlash from their users (that goes for both
rapportive _and_ for google)?

Plastering something across someone else's adspace seems somehow not the most
fair thing to do, blocking ads is one thing, but replacing them with other
content?

Is that ok? Is it ok to replace the ads with other ads? Do we all agree that
functionality trumps ads and therefore rapportive is in the right on this?

What if the party wasn't google but a much smaller one depending on those ads
for its income, would it still be ok then?

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bensummers
Given that Rapportive runs client side and has full access to browser
internals, I'm sure Google would lose the Rapportive-detector war.

~~~
jacquesm
> I'm sure Google would lose the Rapportive-detector war.

I wouldn't bet on that. Chrome is at 10% and rising by the way, so there is
another angle to be wary of.

Betting against 800 # Gorillas is usually not a winning strategy anyway,
especially not if you just took off with their banana.

~~~
pclark
You think Google would make it so Chrome would not handle their extension?
That would cause such a shitstorm for Google - and isn't Adblock a far more
likely target if they wanted to go down that road?

~~~
jacquesm
Adblock is not site specific, google could make it their policy that any
extension targeted to mess with advertising on a specific site would be
against their TOS.

This would catch a whole pile of potential malware and, unfortunately, stuff
like this would be caught in the dragnet.

~~~
sandipagr
It's the user who are agreeing to the TOS by visiting a given website. Google
cannot define TOS for any other website. They can however do it for their own
website. But then, since it's the user who visits the website, why should an
extension designer be responsible? And it would be crazy for anyone to go
after each user without making a big mess.

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points
"These days, most Gmail users never even glance at the ads filling the right-
hand column."

What sort of idiot writes that. I mean seriously. Do people _really_ believe
that Google just serves up those millions of impressions for the hell of it
with no payback?

People look at them. People click them. Google makes a ton of money.
Advertisers get a shedload of traffic.

It's an absolute douchebag move to mess with other peoples content. Reminds me
of the free wifi services that inject their own adverts at the top of every
page on the internet, or rewrite affiliate links etc. I don't care if this
plugin is useful or not, I don't want it to mess with the DOM.

~~~
waderoush
Author of the original article here. I guess I should have said that _I_ never
glance at the Gmail ads and I have a hard time imagining why anyone would, as
they are consistently irrelevant to me. As soon as I learned about a plugin
that could replace the ads with something useful, I installed it.

On the other point that seems to be getting commenters riled up -- "messing
with other people's content" -- I think I am on Rapportive's side. I admit
that I would be seriously annoyed if someone wrote a plugin that replaced my
stories on Xconomy with, say, TechCrunch stories. But that's the risk of
publishing on the Web, where the viewing platform is not ultimately under your
control. And if people started using such plugin widely, it would be useful
feedback for me -- it would mean that I should do something to make my own
stories more interesting. Google should see Rapportive as a signal that
something is missing in Gmail. Either they should provide more relevant ads,
or they should copy (or buy) Rapportive.

~~~
jacquesm
> I would be seriously annoyed if someone wrote a plugin that replaced my
> stories on Xconomy with, say, TechCrunch stories. But that's the risk of
> publishing on the Web

How would you feel about someone writing a plug-in that left your content in
one piece, removed the ads and used your site with all the associated expenses
as a way to launch their product?

And if google did decide to provide 'more relevant ads' how do you propose
those will reach their viewer after rapportive has 'claimed' the space?

Wouldn't it have been better to add the rapportive feature to the page somehow
instead of removing a feature (ads) they deemed superfluous?

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mbreese
Is this how Rapportive works? Because the idea sounds very useful, but do you
really want to build a business around altering the appearance of someone
else's application? Particularly troubling is that they are removing one of
the few money making parts of Gmail.

If it really starts to catch on, are they in for an arms race with Google?

Plus, with this focus, it appears that this company may be left with only one
exit strategy: acquisition by Google.

Like I said, this sounds quite useful, but I'm not sure that I'd like to get
in the middle of it...

~~~
sprout
How much money does Gmail actually make? Whenever I open up Gmail, I am way
too busy to be looking at ads. I'm sure there's a non-zero number of people
clicking on ads, but as far as I'm concerned Google is mostly providing free
IMAP service with a nice web interface and great uptime.

~~~
chopsueyar
Not sure how accurate this is...

[http://seekingalpha.com/article/196953-youtube-much-more-
imp...](http://seekingalpha.com/article/196953-youtube-much-more-important-
than-gmail-for-google)

"...we estimate that Gmail had revenue per 1,000 page views of 6 cents in 2005
which increased to about 30 cents in 2009."

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snitko
The minute I saw Rapportive I started using it. The idea and the
implementation are just great. Not that it does something revolutionary at the
moment, but it's simple and useful and I believe there's a potential. Great
job, guys!

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amirmc
I've read through the comments here and I'm really surprised by those that
bring up Gmail's 'revenue' streams.

Unless someone from Gmail cares to comment on: (a) How Gmail handles their P&L
(b) What the main drivers really are ... then anything you read here is
speculation. If I've missed something, please do point me to it.

I agree that there may be a separate argument about 'messing with people's
sites' on the client side, but that really isn't new.

~~~
chopsueyar
Actually, I am curious as to how many commentors are GOOG shareholders, and
consider this an affront.

~~~
amirmc
If I were a shareholder I'd feel better that someone is making GOOG properties
_more_ valuable to end-users.

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jgershen
Is anyone else a fan of the reporting Wade has been doing on this batch of YC
companies? I've really enjoyed the in-depth articles - a nice contrast to the
typical ADD of the Internet echo chamber.

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dtran
Congrats on the writeup Rahul, Sam, Martin, and team! My favorite part: "They
invested over Skype, which was kind of cool, and we all got drunk that
evening.”

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tonystubblebine
I use etacts.com, which seems like the exact same thing. Is there a
difference? I think the major benefit to me is mainly just to see the person's
face. It helps humanize the person on the other end of the email, and often
prompts my memory if we've met before.

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dillydally
eTacts us also YC. I believe the timeline went like this:

1\. eTacts launched as an email reminder service 2\. eTacts gets into YC 3\.
Rapportive launched as a personal CRM 4\. Rapportive gets major traction,
eTacts launches their own personal CRM 5\. Rapportive gets into YC

So...yes, they're virtually identical right now.

eTacts also does email reminders, but Rapportive has Raplets.

~~~
pclark
I think eTacts (god that uppercase T looks hideous) always had _some_ CRM
stuff. Etacts also has tons of analytics and such, which Rapportive does not.
I'm biased towards the Rapportive guys cus I know them, but I don't think its
fair to say Etacts copied Rapportive much (if thats what you were saying)

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InfinityX0
The problem with Rapportive as a business model is that it relies entirely on
Google acquiring them. They have one customer. If Google doesn't want it, it's
a bomb. Despite the usefulness of the service, that's a pretty risky
proposition.

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abraham
Rapportive content itself could be a type of ad. For example when reading an
email from someone who has a LinkedIn account Google/Rapportive will display
the connection for a small fee per impression from LinkedIn.

