Cc:Betty, a service aimed at organizing group email threads, has managed to secure a $1.5 million seed investment, mainly from Venrock but with Seraph Group and Hollsven also participating, according to TechCrunch. This comes after a recent upgrade to its service adding several features and also sporting a new look.

“Cc:Betty works as a personal email assistant to initiate and sort through emails and parse conversations, files, images, media, dates and places, in the spirit of saving time while collaborating and coordinating with groups of people. Just [access] Cc:Betty and get what you really want to know out of email,” the creators describe the service.

Cc:Betty was founded in 2008 by Michael Cerda and was officially launched just two months ago. Originally the service offered online work environments called “mailspaces,” which allowed users to collaborate more easily using email. The recent upgrade added threads for the emails, making them easier to follow, and also sorting options, by person or attachments, to those threads. In order to save time the service enables users to view links or attachments, which show up as thumbnails, without having to leave the site. And with the help of a new filtering system users can choose to view only images, videos or links from an email thread.

"People are getting used to all the great social platforms and tools available, and email isn't one of them," said Cc:Betty CEO and co-founder Michael Cerda. "Betty was designed to transport people out of old-school email into a modern day mailspace where they can easily communicate, collaborate, share, and engage in an organized and interconnected environment. Our goal is to make communicating simple and productive again. Our beta users are responding with great input and feedback, which is represented in this latest iteration."