Introducing An App Store for Microsoft Outlook

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In your inbox, who can matter more than what. If the sender is someone you know, a coworker you collaborate with or a sales lead you’ve identified, the email becomes infinitely more meaningful.

Dallas-based RedCritter connects the who to the what with RedCritter for Outlook, an app store for Outlook that includes 25 applications ranging from the social to the practical.

 

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RedCritter’s approach is not dissimilar from Xobni’s. The email add-on lives in the right-hand side of the user’s inbox and displays a plethora of dynamic data on the sender or emails.

Founded in January 2010, RedCritter aims to be more than just a tool to enhance your email experience. It wants to be a company that builds enterprise software that incorporates the latest technologies and social media innovations to make business systems easier to use.

“I want to build a new breed of enterprise application,” says RedCritter CEO Mike Beaty. “It’s always been an interest of mine to streamline business processes.”
Apps for Outlook

RedCritter’s most consumer-friendly product is the Outlook app store, where you can install any of the company’s 25 Outlook applications. Beaty describes it as converting standard email to Inbox 2.0.

Many of the apps simply add a social media layer. The Tweets app cycles through your email senders’ recent Tweets. The Klout app displays contacts’ influence scores. The Foursquare app highlights their profiles and badges.

Business users can opt to install the sfContacts app, which creates a connection between Salesforce and Outlook. The Attachments app highlights attachments from senders, while the Office Docs and Google Docs apps find documents related to your email or contacts.

With a Basecamp app, Highrise app, Constant Contact app and even a Dual Clock app for seeing the email sender’s time, there’s no shortage of convenience and context that can be added to the inbox experience.
RedCritter Labs

The startup is developing more enterprise products, such as RedCritter Guide and RedCritter Tracker. Beaty lumps them all under the RedCritter Labs label but suggests that individual products may be spun out as their own entities in the future.

RedCritter Guide is for website owners and is designed to help them enhance the usability of websites with easy-to-create interactive guided tours and online product demos for site visitors. The product is in an invitation stage, but readers can enter “MASHABLE” as the invitation code to gain access.

RedCritter Tracker, a web-based project management tool slated for July release, aims to improve the work relationship between companies and their developers. Tracker weaves gamification elements into the project management experience — so companies can reward developers for completing tasks.

“RedCritter Tracker offers streamlined project management for Agile methodology along with tightly integrated message feeds, gamification and rewards,” Beaty says.

The product includes a rewards store so developers can exchange their achievements for gift cards and other prizes.

“Developers will have a day-to-day incentive to complete more complicated tasks,” says Beaty, himself a long-time developer.
Critter Who?

RedCritter has been under the radar, Beaty says, focused on building and releasing new products. Meanwhile, other startups in the email-meets-social intelligence space command headlines on a regular basis.

Still, Beaty says investors are very excited by the Outlook tools. They have the opportunity to reach more than 500 million Outlook users. The investors he has talked to are also enthusiastic about Tracker’s gamification elements.

Beaty’s next big decision will be whether to take funding and move out west. While he doesn’t need outside capital to continue research and development on RedCritter products, he admits to being at a disadvantage by not being in Silicon Valley.

“You’re not in the club if you’re not out there,” he says.
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