Hello, Again, Plaxo

I was reintroduced to Plaxo the other day. When I last knew Plaxo in the early 00's, it was an "address book in the sky" that would automatically make sure we always had the latest contact information for the people we needed to stay in touch with.



Plaxo's idea was that each person has one, correct, contact file (personal address, work address, phone numbers, etc.) The flaw in how we keep contact information up to date is that we all keep our own copies of an individual's contact information (let's use the name 'Sue' for this post). When Sue moves or changes her contact information, she needs to tell everyone she knows about it, or hope that all those people with the now out-of-date information ask her for the new contact info. By signing up to Plaxo, you created a permanent connection between your contact information and anyone else in your network that was also a Plaxo member and had permission to view your contact information. So when Sue updates her contact information, everyone ON PLAXO, in her network is automatically notified. And you could sync Plaxo with Outlook to make sure you had the updated information where you could use it.



The challenge with Plaxo was a scale problem. It had to have enough people subscribe to have enough of any one person's contacts in the system to make it worthwhile for them to subscribe. In the late 90s, and even up until recent times, people were afraid to use the Internet to keep their contact information up to date. Sure "aggressive" social networkers like me will put their information anywhere they think they can make a connection. But the mass market was reluctant, meaning Plaxo could not get enough mass to pull it off.



(Side note: it seems like Microsoft would be in a better position to pull off something like this, since it probably has the contact information for more than 80% of the U.S. population in its Outlook users' contacts. However, the backlash from Microsoft being seen as "big brother" and risks from inappropriate use of contact information would outweigh the potential revenue they could generate. Some times companies (like Plaxo) really aren't in a position to solve the problems they are trying to solve.)



So I was surprised to see that my old friend Plaxo had been given a "social networking" coat of paint, and relaunched as a cross between LinkedIn and Facebook/MySpace.



They seem to have taken a Web 2.0 approach to the whole thing. They have a feature that allows you to "Hook up the websites you use". You can link Plaxo to the content you post on many of the social networking sites you might want to use, such as MySpace, Facebook, Bloglines, Bebo, del.icio.us, flickr, Twitter, Amazon Wish List.



I think it's an interesting approach. They call it Plaxo Pulse. Here is how they are positioning it:

1. Keep in touch with the people from all your social networks you actually care about.


2. It's an open system that allows you to connect with many social networking sites.


3. But, it's secure and allows you to share personal information with friends and professional information with work colleagues.

The ironic thing is that the ultimate success of Plaxo still depends on scale. If it can't get enough people to subscribe to it, then it will have to reinvent itself, again, and hook itself to whatever the next big thing is.