I signed up for Plaxo a short while ago, and I have to say, I’ve been less than impressed so far. While the Plaxo platform is not necessarily bad in itself, I kind of feel like it’s just a somewhere between Facebook and LinkedIn — both of which I already use.
I’ve tried to give Plaxo a chance, but ultimately I haven’t really found anything I’m too excited about, not to mention I’m not overly eager about having yet another social networking site to fill in endless minutiae about myself.
I posted before about the questionable importance of LInkedIn, wondering whether most people actually have that much of a use it (besides being a way of keeping in touch with people you normally might drift apart from).
So is there something obvious I’m missing with Plaxo? Some kind of bell or whistle that has escaped me? I’d be interested to hear opinions from either side of the question — does Plaxo actually offer anything we haven’t seen before?
Like this post? Subscribe now to the full RSS feed.
April 22nd, 2008 at 3:35 pm
I am biased (since I head up marketing at Plaxo), but let me share a few thoughts. I use Plaxo and LinkedIn and get more value by using both.
LinkedIn helps me naturally grow my real network (of all the people I’ve lost touch with and would like to reconnect with). I sync LinkedIn to my Plaxo account, and so my one, true, unifed address book just keeps getting better. Many of the people I connect with on LinkedIn also use Plaxo, so I get not only the email address I got from connecting on LinkedIn, but now also all the rich contact info they wish to share via Plaxo. Result: Killer rolodex that keeps getting better and keeps itself up-to-date.
Also, since my Plaxo address book syncs with Outlook, my Mac, and my webmail, it has everyone in it that I communicate with, including not only my business network, but also my friends, and my family.
And, because Pulse is a new kind of social utility, with a feature set for post-college demographic. My address book has come to life with all sorts of content being shared online from my family and friends. I get their photos, regardless of whether they use Flickr, Photobucket, SmugMug, Webshots, Picasa, or Plaxo’s own photosharing. So, I am now more richly connected with the people I know and care about, and I have fine-grained control over what I share with whom.
April 23rd, 2008 at 6:43 am
I’ve held off joining Plaxo, even though I’ve received a number of invites via my Linkedin contacts. I’m not sure I have room in my online life for another social network. This coupled with the fact that I prefer microblogging sites like Twitter and Tumblr. RSS has allowed me to easily share my blog posts and Flickr photos with my ‘followers’ and friends on Twitter and Tumblr.
I have friends on Facebook, business contacts on Linkedin, followers on Twitter and Tumblr, and fans on Pownce. Until the interweb offers some kind of seamless digital life integration with all my friends, followers contacts, fans, etc., I’m holding off on Plaxo.
April 23rd, 2008 at 8:20 am
Thanks for your comment John. It’s nice to have somebody from Plaxo comment on its value. I didn’t know that Plaxo could sync with LinkedIn — that’s an interesting feature I guess I missed. The picture thing is interesting as well, I definitely see the value of integrating all of these photo-sharing applications/sites into one place.
Angela — this is the problem I’m running into. For me, it’s become a human bandwidth problem. The only way I would have time to respond to all the messages, invites and other communciations I get through all these networks, I would have to devote much more time to it than I do now (which I have to say, I’m not really willing to do, there’s actually real life stuff I want to do too
). I have to say I haven’t really got into microblogging, and still feel pretty unfamiliar with it. Out of curiosity, is there something in particular you prefer about the interaction with microblogging-type sites?