

Everyme (YC S11) Launching Private Beta of New Address Book - olivercameron
http://everyme.com

======
pclark
I have over 600 contacts on my iPhone and it is a complete nightmare.

The fact that smart phones do not intelligently dial numbers based on where
you are in the world is absurd (eg: prepend dialing code!!)

The fact I have numerous contacts of the same people, each with different
details (eg: two direct contacts named Oliver Cameron, one with an email, one
with a mobile phone number) and then the iPhone never telling you which is
which when you need to sms/email.

I would also love smart contact groups, like extract all the contacts with
_only_ email addresses, so that every time I wish to dial or sms a contact, I
can only select actually useful ones. And so on.

~~~
amirmc
> _... intelligently dial numbers based on where you are in the world ..._

I lived abroad for a year. The pain of manually adding '+44' to every contact
in my addressbook (directly on my non-smartphone) meant that I've only used
international numbers ever since.

~~~
smiler
Indeed, I've been travelling so much this year that every number now has +44
in it

------
olivercameron
Hey guys, founder of Everyme here. As for why this is different than a contact
list, imagine if your address book was kept accurate and up-to-date magically.
If a friend changes their phone number, why should your address book get out
of date?

Couple that with having everything about your contacts at your fingertips
(posts, messages, profiles), awesome automatic grouping, syncing to
everywhere, and you have a completely new address book.

~~~
amirmc
This sounds really interesting and I'm looking forward to seeing what you've
got. Had several conversations with people about contact management and
address books in the past and I expect you've had similar discussions. I'm
curious to know your opinions.

One of the discussions I had revolved around ownership of data and there were
basically two points of view, both perfectly valid.

The first PoV was that an owner/curator sees the address book as _theirs_ and
if they add someone's details to it, those details should remain until the
owner/curator decides to remove them. The second PoV was that someone should
be able to 'grant access' to their contact info and if either party decides to
break the connection, the contact info should disappear from both address
books.

I'm firmly in the former camp since I don't like the idea of my address book
becoming a volatile place (esp. since I have over 2k+ people in there).
However, I can see the argument for having more control over who has my
contact info.

I'm curious to know what approach you (and Everyme) has taken and what you
think of the points above. Am I off the mark?

~~~
olivercameron
I'm leaning very much towards everyone owning their own data. If someone
doesn't want you to have their phone number, but you already know it, I don't
think it's fair that the number should be deleted.

As Everyme syncs everywhere, deleting any type of info would be very, very
bad.

------
rauar
Thanks for bringing this up. Felt exactly the same pain, worked on it and
_launched_ a solution. No private beta or invitations required - 100% public
and free !

The result: A dead simple "remote control" which allows your contacts to
update their information directly in your phone book.

All you need to do is:

\- setup trusted connections with friends by email address (invitations
possible as well) \- enable sync via Google Sync (OAuth)

What you get: automatic and immediate contact updates straight into your phone
when your contacts change their info.

Try it here: <https://addresspush.com>

Feedback seriously appreciated as well (here or on the site).

------
amadoru
It's great that Everyme is trying to address a very common contacts problem. I
always use Google services to keep contacts up-to-date but when people change
their contact details, I tend to confuse the old details with the new once
after some time. And it's great Everyme is addressing this very same issue.

There are other problems related to contact management which some people
usually get into too. I don't know if Everyme supports these, but here I go
just in case.

1\. Not every mobile network allows calling when you are using the
international extension for a local number. For example I have a mobile number
which I use in Singapore which doesn't allow me to use have the singapore's
international calling code in the number to call from singapore to singapore.
So having the international code added to the phone number doesn't make sense
all the time. When switching to such a network, we have to change all the
numbers to comply with these conditions.

2\. Some mobile networks allows bypassing regular IDD and instead call through
a VOIP service of their own. This is different from network operator to
operator and operators require you to have a number prefix specific to the
network if you want to make an international call through that service. But
when you have more than 200-300 contacts in your phone, out of which at least
50 are contacts you regularly use, this becomes a headache to change these
prefixes when you transfer from one network to other. I personally experience
this trouble a lot as I am traveling between 4 countries regularly.

If Everyme can address these solutions, I'm sure this services will be a great
win for lot of travelers.

Cheers!

~~~
olivercameron
We're working on it, great to hear what people's specific problems are!
Thanks.

------
Skywing
I'm really glad to see a site, in YC, trying to tackle the problem of
contacts. A particular problem I always see is that when people lose their
phone, or lose all their numbers, they create groups or events on Facebook and
spam their whole friend's list for numbers. Also, if people on my contact list
change their number then all of a sudden I no longer have it. (emails, twitter
accounts, etc too)

I'm happy for Everyme, but this really serves as more of a reminder to myself
to follow my gut instinct. I had been working on my own version of a service
that aimed to solve these exact problems that I felt like I had, myself. I had
worked on it for about a month and had it working with full-text search on
various info fields for each contact. I kind of wanted it to be a Quora (the
find/ask a person feature) meets a cloud sync'd contacts service. Time to
apply for YC S11 rolled around and I had planned on applying with this site,
but at the last minute I switched to a location-based chat website, Geohello,
which I posted on here. I spent a brief week or two on Geohello before
switching to yet another site, which was a dumb location-based Groupon clone,
for your iPhone, called Ayowe. I ended up applying to YC with both Geohello
and Ayowe, instead of my contact info website, called Tactifo. Neither of the
two sites I applied with got in. (I applied with two because I had a co-
founder)

Just goes to show that I should have stuck with my gut and focused on the
original site. Anyways, best of luck to Everyme! :)

------
neilrahilly
Hi. Please check out atomiccontacts.com. I've also tackled this problem and
FWIW applied to YC S2011. My name's Neil Rahilly and I'd love to hear feedback
from HN readers. Comment here or email directly me at neilrahilly@gmail.com.
Thanks!

------
ashamedlion
Oh boy, this is sorely needed on the iPhone. My address book is in pretty
crappy condition and I've been setting up all of these facebook sync options
that haven't panned out very well. Hopefully is aggregates contact information
nicely.

------
T_S_
Interesting that Plaxo can be reinvented years later and get funded. And I
don't mean that in a snarky way.

~~~
iloveyouocean
I, too, also immediately thought, 'So . . . Plaxo for your phone?' I notice
that they have avoided any mention of Plaxo, so hopefully their service will
not be a spammy waste.

~~~
olivercameron
We've definitely learnt from Plaxo's mistakes. Our invite system is incredibly
polite, for example if 10 people invite you, you'll only ever get one email.

------
vishaldpatel
Cool idea. Time to guess on how the app will work:

-> Download the app.

-> Log in to one or more social networks, or create a contact-profile. Allow anyone who is your friend on a social network or already has your contact to stay up-to-date on changes to your contact information.

-> Check to see if existing contacts also have the app, and if so, then the two can now stay in sync forever! =)

-> Added bonus feature - all phone numbers will be stored with correct international extensions for easy international dialing.

------
brk
If this is executed properly it will be huge. A very big problem to tackle,
but a sorely needed one as well.

------
walexander
Is there an android client? Why is this better than any other contact list?

I know there was a post about how products don't need a homepage, just give an
email form, but realistically I'm not likely to ever give my email out if I
have that little information about a product.

------
aorshan
How will it "magically" update a contacts information if that contact is not
also a user of the service? Also, will you be able to change a contact's name
or will it only be what their "profile" is? (ie. changing "John Smith" to
"John Smith YC09") Otherwise sounds amazing.

------
uast23
Not sure about the other features (could not find it actually) but if only it
lets me set a list of contacts for which it reminds me the birthdays and also
tells me that I haven't talked to them in a long time. Sigh.

------
ashbrahma
How is it different from the Friends app on iPhone by Taptivate?
<http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2010/11/friends-iphone-app/>

~~~
olivercameron
We actually made that app, we've taken a lot of the tech from there and used
it in Everyme.

------
quietdean
By the graphic, I assume it's iPhone only? It's not clear otherwise.

~~~
olivercameron
iOS and web at first, then followed shortly by Android.

------
phil
What a fantastic splash page.

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avk
Is this a big enough problem for average people? I know people create a "lost
phone, need your number" Facebook group or event but is that enough of a pain?
I've never seen more than one from the same person. So what exactly are you
offering the average person with a messy, incomplete, and unsynced address
book and why would they pay?

------
sim0n
I really need an app like this, can't wait to try out the beta!

------
vailripper
How is this different from HTC sync? Right now I have my Facebook contacts
linked to contacts in my phone, and it pulls in information from their
Facebook accounts?

~~~
encoderer
Without ever getting into specifics, I use Google Voice integration (on my
Sprint phone), and of course Gmail and Facebook, and HTC Sync linked them all
and manages numbers/etc fantastically with just a few manual merges when I
first got the phone.

It's really a wonderful feature.

------
EGreg
What does it do?

------
chrisvallejos
Love what you have so far on the website, can't wait to download the app. The
design aesthetic is great.

------
pazimzadeh
Where you inspired by Push Pop Press' old teaser page?

------
chetan51
How will it be different from Plaxo?

~~~
drudru11
I worked on Plaxo (or as the kids call it today... 'some electronic rolodex
company' :-) )

This idea sounds exactly like Plaxo.

That being said, I'll sign up and see what they are up to. I believe there is
a lot of innovation that can still happen here. Just recently, a few companies
trying to attack this space again.

Also, what I would really like to know is if they have something here or if
this is just another YC email signup test.

We shall see.

~~~
olivercameron
This isn't a test, we definitely have something here.

~~~
drudru11
cool, looking forward to seeing it.

------
jasontan
congrats oliver

~~~
olivercameron
Thanks!

------
there
"every me"? how many of you are there?

------
Hisoka
How is this gonna make you a million dollars? You're applying to YC, this
ain't a hobby project, so that's why this is a legit question.

For the record, it doesn't really solve a pain for me. Just a minor annoyance,
and it's not something I'm willing to spend money on. If you're making this to
an app, remember that app sales are just 1 time profits. And the profit
gradually goes down as your app lifetime goes up. Is earning $300K once (this
is optimistic) really a serious business model?

~~~
webwright
Really?

If a million dollars is the target, just going through YC should do it for
them. An acqui-hire deal generally nets more than $1M per founder.

If you'd like an example of how this can be at least a $150M business, check
<http://www.crunchbase.com/company/plaxo>

~~~
Hisoka
So they're just betting on an acquisition? How about explaining how they're
gonna make money w/o resorting to that?

