Features

REDWOOD SHORES — You know the drill: Message. Reply. Delete, delete, forward, reply, delete. 

Not only is the average online user wading through 2,052 e-mails this year, according to Jupiter Communications, many are battling an overload of instant messages, spreadsheets and Web pages – not to mention old-fashioned phone calls and snail mail. 

A Redwood Shores-based company called Zaplet Inc. has produced some software designed to make wired life a little simpler. 

The company’s Zaplets software combines instant messaging and e-mail features with the rich graphical content of Web pages to form what is essentially interactive e-mail. It connects groups of people to information that can be constantly updated even after it’s sent. 

With e-mail used as a delivery tool for content and conversation, one Zaplet can be used to collaborate on work projects, keep up invitation lists, conduct surveys, compile addresses, raise donations – even share gossip. 

“We think of the Zaplet platform as a whole new genre for the Web,” says company chief executive Alan Baratz. “Eighty percent of the tasks on which employees spend their time, there’s no (software) support for this. 

“Zaplets will make it really easy to snap together applications that support easy, efficient communication and collaboration,” Baratz said. 

Zaplet isn’t alone in trying to capture an emerging market for online collaboration. New York-based Gizmoz hopes to allow businesses to provide their customers constant updates of marketing and content, while privately held 2Way Corp. of Seattle focuses more on in-company communications. 

Microsoft’s Netmeeting and Lotus Development’s Sametime software offer interactive communications features – and a new program called Groove by a Lotus Notes author is also a potential contender in the arena. 

Zaplet executives stress, however, that their offering combines service and software for corporations looking for simple packages. 

The company is the creation of David Roberts, a former CIA employee, and Brian Axe, a former operations and marketing executive at Hewlett-Packard Co. and IBM Corp. 

Axe concocted the idea two years ago during a stint at Reactivity, one of the Silicon Valley’s many high-tech incubators, and enlisted Axe as a co-founder. 

Zaplet was originally envisioned as a tool for consumers to do such things as store and exchange personal databases of anything from family photos to phone numbers. But Baratz recently decided to concentrate on selling the software and accompanying services to big businesses. Consumers can still try out the product for free at Zaplet’s Web site. 

A journalist’s attempt to do just that went smoothly. An invitation to a party with simple graphics went out to six friends, who had the opportunity to RSVP and make comments in a running tally that could be tracked simply by reopening the original e-mail. 

The Zaplet Web site will be changed next year when the company launches new software packages for business use. That might help explain why the start-up has had no shortage of investors. 

The new technology’s promise – and its potential to grab a chunk of the $10 billion online communications business – recently helped Zaplet secure $90 million in financing from major venture capital firms and such industry heavyweights as Cisco Systems Inc., Novell Inc. and Oracle Corp. Early customers include USAToday.com, ZDNET and the Republican National Committee, which used Zaplet to send its redesigned Web site to 25,000 supporters in 50 states, Canada, Mexico and England. 

Zaplet has already invited several Fortune 100 companies to test new prepackaged offerings, such as Zaplets that can do sales forecasting and field tracking of sales employees and software to track the progress of a company job candidate. 

By charging on a registered-user basis, a company with 10,000 to 20,000 employees would pay “a few million dollars” to get Zaplet software to install on its secure corporate servers, Baratz said. 

Zaplet also will host information for companies on its own servers under the same per-user arrangement, with monthly billing, he said.