Plaxo recently launched a new 3.0 version that was more than just an AJAX face lift. Plaxo, once a notorious spammer, has grown beyond their core service of being the web’s address book. The new version not only synchronizes contact information, but also your information feeds, like Flickr, calendars, and adding new feeds every day through Plaxo Pulse. Today Plaxo is joining a host of other sites supporting the OpenID platform as their larger vision takes form, and it is becoming a hub instead of a directory. Facebook has talked repeatedly about their “social graph” (computer science jargon for the data structure behind a social network). It’s the core of their platform, providing the context that makes their applications relevant to users. The only problem is that it’s still relatively closed off. Applications can exist within Facebook or outside through their API. Either way, Facebook still owns the users. Plaxo is not a “social network” like Facebook, but cuts to the core of what makes a “social graph.” Plaxo has access to the contact information their 15 million users. This not only includes phone numbers and emails, but the connections between users that make up the links on the social graph. Plaxo is not making this “social graph” a walled garden. They’re becoming the Switzerland of contact information and have been focusing on inter-operating with new services (Yahoo, MSN, AOL). The addition of OpenID lowers the friction of getting on the graph. While not as exciting as Facebook, Plaxo is edging in their direction. Plaxo Pulse ties together disparate services from across the web unlike the news feed, which ties together only Facebook’s content. While Plaxo hasn’t launched a platform to a crowded hall of over-eager developers, they have quietly focused on linking to existing applications on the web. Currently the provide a single interface for syncing with the social feeds, email, contact, and calendaring applications business people care about. It’s no long stretch to see this developing into even deeper integration with more web applications. → Read More
Plaxo has announced Plaxo 3.0, a new version that builds on its multi-point sync product by offering improved sync options as well as a feed-style people tracker. Automated “multi-way sync” under Plaxo 3.0 includes Google Calender, Microsoft (Outlook, Outlook Express, Vista Mail, and Hotmail), Yahoo (Mail and Calendar), Mac OSX (for Address Book, iCal, and iPhone), AOL (AIM and Classic AOL), Mozilla Thunderbird and LinkedIn. The new multi-component “smart address book” web app includes tabs for contacts, calendar, tasks, notes, and more. A revamped address book component includes click-to-call phone numbers via Jajah and maps from Yahoo. Technology acquired from Plaxo’s acquisition of HipCal has delivered new calendar features including an “upcoming” view that includes weather, countdowns to major events, and embedded photos from Flickr. Plaxo new “Pulse” feature aggregates content from friends. Plaxo is said to have 15 million registered users. Previous TechCrunch coverage here. (via Download Squad) → Read More
Update: I spoke with Plaxo CEO Ben Golub and a spokesperson from Xing this weekend. Both deny the deal, although Xing has other news later this week, they say. We are hearing a LOT of chatter about a possible Xing-Plaxo merger in the $250 million range. The deal makes some sense – newly public Xing is headquartered in Germany and hasn’t gotten much traction in the U.S. where it competes directly with LinkedIn. Plaxo, with a very strong U.S. presence, could give them the opportunity they need to attack this market. But people who would be very likely to have knowledge of the deal are saying they’ve heard absolutely nothing. One thing we are hearing from everyone, though: Plaxo is definitely in play. The company’s fair valuation is another matter. Last year they crossed 10 million members, claimed they were getting 50,000 new members per day, and had just become profitable. But it has been more than a year since Plaxo released those stats. → Read More
Comcast is ditching its antiquidated webmail software and replacing it with Zimbra’s Ajax office suite, the companies will announce this evening. That’s good news for Comcast’s twelve million broadband customers, and even better news for Zimbra – this deal will significantly grow the number of Zimbra users from the current six million or so customers. The deal also includes new functionality, including giving Comcast triple play customers (VOIP phone, Internet, Cable TV) the ability to listen to voicemails online and forward via email. Users will also be able to manage instant messaging from the Zimbra client, and the companies are adding Plaxo’s address book functionality into the mix. Zimbra recently released new software that lets customers access their webmail offline. The company offers its basic service for free via an open-source download. They charge for customer service and also distribute their premium version through resellers. They’ve raised just over $30 million in venture capital. → Read More
Today’s the day – SuperBowl XLI. Hundreds of millions of people around the world will eat junk food, drink beer, and watch the best television advertising all year interrupted periodically with a football game. Six startups (Meebo, Meez, Multiply, Plaxo, RockYou and Technorati) who can’t afford the $2.5 million plus for a thirty second spot during the game got together to produce low-budget “SuperBowl” ads and put them on YouTube. Some of them are pretty entertaining. Others, not so much. We’ve embedded all of them below and have a poll to see which one you like the best. By the way, last year’s real SuperBowl ads are still up on Google Video at video.google.com/superbowl.html. I assume Google will replace those ads with SuperBowl XLI ads tomorrow. Yahoo will also be hosting the actual SuperBowl ads once the games starts at Yahoo Video. My favorite “startup” ad is Technorati, although they cheated by using footage from one of my favorite movies. Plaxo and Meebo are tied for second place. The ads and poll are below, in this order: Meebo, Meez, Multiply, Plaxo, RockYou and Technorati: → Read More
Why is this man smiling? Because Verizon today announced it will be selling a service from Plaxo that allows its wireless customers to automagically sync up their contacts between their computers and mobile devices, over the air. The Java BREW application is compatible with most current Verizon handsets and costs $4.49 a month. While we’d rather see this as a one-time fee-for-service charge, Verizon and Plaxo seem to think that its customers update their phonebooks a lot, when really, short of getting a new handset, users don’t. But if you’re a new customer or getting an upgraded phone, using the service for one month might not be a bad idea, though it can usually do it at any of its retail stores for a small fee. It still can’t stop you from drunk dialing you-know-who. Verizon to Offer Mobile Phone Contact Updates [Reuters] → Read More
This news was embargoed until today at 5 AM PST, but Om managed to dig up the facts anyway. Recently reformed Plaxo is announcing the acquisition of online calendaring startup HipCal, which was built by five college students while attending Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, New York Plaxo says they will integrate HipCal’s calendaring product directly into Plaxo’s free product, and expand premium calendar services as well. Plaxo, now with 11 million or so members and adding 20,000 per day, is in an excellent position to leverage its address book features into new product lines. Calendaring is an obvious next step. The size of the aquisition was not announced but is almost certainly single digit millions. Here’s the full text of the press release: → Read More
Plaxo CEO Ben Golub wrote a public apology on their corporate blog for their past actions in encouraging “acquaintance spam”. I have to say that I never actually thought this would happen. I’m surprised and happy to see this. Heck, I might even join the service to show my support. And I mean that without any trace of sarcasm whatsoever (really). Here’s the meat of the apology: Plaxo has been taking its lumps across the blogosphere the past couple of days. Most of which, frankly, we deserve…To everyone who hated getting Plaxo update messages, felt we were generating acquaintance spam, or otherwise were harmed by the service, I personally apologize on behalf of all of the people at Plaxo. I know we have a long way to go to earn your trust, and can only ask that you judge us by our actions going forward. Thank you, Plaxo. Consider me a supporter from here on out. → Read More
Plaxo tends to bring on strong negative emotions in people. Frustration. Revulsion. Dismay. The reason so many people hate Plaxo? Those of us who aren’t customers, which is the vast majority of everyone, get multiple daily emails from those few misguided souls who’ve chosen to sign up for the Plaxo Spam Service (my name, not theirs). When you sign up for Plaxo, they make it misleadingly easy to spam your entire address book with your contact information and a Plaxo advertisement. And any updates they do are likely to be sent to their entire address book as well. As millions of people unwittingly do this, we, the non Plaxo users, are hit with a massive aggregate cost: dealing with all of this spam. Jeff Nolan and many others have dealt with Plaxo by putting it in their spam filter. I’ve gone through their multi step (and very hard to find) process for removing each of my five emails from their system (the process includes replying to yet another email from them to prove you own the account – how nice). And all along the way, as we are forced to deal with Plaxo spam and various avoidance processes, we are told by them that the best way to avoid the spam is to simply become a member of Plaxo. If you join Plaxo, you can fill out your contact information once and choose who gets to see your information. From then on, updates are handled through Plaxo so that you won’t receive any more e-mails. It’s like a stalker telling his stalkee that if she will only marry him, he’ll stop. And if you blog about Plaxo, or otherwise publicly voice your discontent, Plaxo will send a representative to patiently beat you into submission in the comments. Well, Plaxo has finally announced that they’ve harassed enough people into joining and won’t be making it quite so easy to for users to spam their entire address book. The words they chose certainly tell us that, at least internally, they fully knew how miserable they were making all of us: …we’ve always known that the update requests were a means to an end — our goal has always been to get as many members as possible so that these e-mails were unnecessary. And it looks like we’re finally getting to that end. As of last week, we’ve past 10 million members. We → Read More
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