BOSTON -- I've seen dozens of "universal inbox" businesses in the past few years. All of them are based on the value inherent in giving message recipients a better way to manage the flow. Alain Daste, CEO of Messageblaster, demonstrated a different concept to a packed room Tuesday at our Venture Market East conference here: he makes a "universal outbox" that gives control to message
senders.Messageblaster bombards the recipients' message devices (email, phone, pager, fax) to make sure the messages get to the recipient. Senders can alert groups when necessary (a meeting change; a flight cancellation) and can program the system to collect simple responses (entered via touchtone phone or email) that are then collated in real time.
The usefulness of this technology was obvious to everybody here, which will help the company in its second funding round. And while there are doubts about Messageblaster's revenue model, the company recently got validation in the form of a partnership with AT&T, which is going to resell the service. Others see Messageblaster as a great viral application that could quickly win a desirable user base, which would make the company a tasty acquisition candidate -- not just for its technology but for its demographic.