Plaxo: "All your social network are belong to us" (and mamma mia!)

Morning. Mumble. Monday's IT Blogwatch: in which Plaxo launches its new 3.0 service. Not to mention Queen in a Windows MessageBox...

Eric Auchard reports :

Plaxo, which makes software for PC users to keep address books up-to-date, said on Sunday it is helping millions of members open up their online datebooks to build social networks like MySpace or Facebook. In a major comeback push by the 6-year-old company, which Silicon Valley insiders see as a forerunner of the social-network craze, Plaxo has created the first Web service to share data between major address and calendar programs.

With Plaxo 3.0, as the new service is known, consumers can synchronize address books and calendar data locked up inside Microsoft Outlook, Google and Yahoo services, Apple Macintosh computers, Mozilla Thunderbird e-mail and many mobile phones.
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The move involves synchronizing all the scheduling and address information an individual has scattered across computers, mobile phones and online accounts and linking up this data to personalized Web pages so that friends can stay abreast of Web activities the user lets them know about.

Plaxo's J. Todd Masonis announces his bouncing baby beta:

About a year ago we announced a big change in direction for Plaxo, and since then have been hard at work, quietly rebuilding the Plaxo service. But now, it’s finally here -- a day that we’ve been looking forward to for a long time – the launch of an all-new version of the service, Plaxo 3.0. It’s been in private beta for a few weeks, but today we’re opening the doors to everyone at beta.plaxo.com.
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Mozilla Thunderbird,the biggest news is that we tackled the really hard problem of sync across an unprecedented breadth of apps and services. We’re now doing automated multi-way sync between Google (starting with Calendar, with Gmail coming soon), Microsoft (Outlook, Outlook Express, Vista Mail, and Hotmail), Yahoo! (Mail and Calendar), Mac OSX Sync Services (for Address Book, iCal, and iPhone), AOL (AIM and Classic AOL), Mobile phones, LinkedIn

Our new sync platform sync was built using SyncML, an open standard, which means that we’re making it easy for other companies to plug into Plaxo and have the benefit of sync in their own apps ... There’s also an entirely new version of plaxo.com, a multi-component “smart address book” web app (an ambitious AJAX app built with Dojo), with tabs for contacts, calendar, tasks, notes, and more.
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And there’s one totally new feature that builds on our original vision of keeping you connected to the people you know, but takes it to the next level. It’s called Pulse ... Here’s the idea: people you know are creating great online content every day, but discovering it is difficult, and staying on top of it is even harder. Plaxo Pulse takes the effort and complexity out of the process by automating the sharing of feeds, starting with Flickr photos, blogposts, and Amazon Wish Lists, Plaxo contact info, and more on the way.

Om Malik decodes:

A few years ago, Philippe Kahn, who headed up Borland and started a couple of other companies including LightSurf and Starfish Software said, “Synchronization between various devices needs to happen quite automatically, without complication and has to be transparent.” With the new Plaxo 3.0, Kahn’s wishes are almost coming true ... (I say almost because there are still some platforms that are not supported, and the beta release isn’t quite bug free.) ... There are some serious bugs with this beta release, and we had some problems syncing with Google and Yahoo, but the older Outlook & Apple Address Book synced without much problems ... The service wasn’t quite responsive in Apple browsers, though it seemed zippy enough on Windows XP – both Firefox and IE. We are assuming that these are first day jitters, and company will be able to overcome performance issues, in time.
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With this new release, Plaxo is trying to overcome its user-unfriendly image, including over-aggressive update features that resulted in a backlash. It is also trying to take some of the more popular elements of social networks and adding them to its service, with a focus on Sync.
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One of the features I like a lot in this new release is the ability to add someone’s email address and instantly find their information on Plaxo, and then just being able to add them to my list of contacts. No scanning the cards, or typing someone’s information. Given the large number of people I meet on a daily basis, don’t blame me for liking this shortcut ... the new Plaxo 3.0, while still in beta is good enough for folks to give the company, and their new service at least a second look.

David Chartier cuts to the core:

Plaxo's ability to automatically update your address book whenever a fellow Plaxo user changes their information was a pretty unique feature that really let the company's vision shine. After playing with this new beta, however, we feel comfortable saying that Plaxo 3.0 could very well be nothing short of revolutionary to world of data management and synchronization.

Robert Scoble calls it, "The new Switzerland of social networks":

I really want to love the new Plaxo. The 18-minute demo I got last week is awesome ... They’ve completely rebuilt the system from scratch and removed the reliance on Outlook and the negative “send spam to your friends” kind of stuff. Here’s an interview I did with the chief platform architect and VP of marketing of Plaxo and here’s the demo video
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It is really awesome ... it now is encroaching on social networking apps like LinkedIn and Facebook. If they can get it all to work (and get filters for my cell phones and Facebook itself) then it’d be great ... When it works it’s the best way to manage your contacts.

Matt Marshall dances to the venture beat:

Plaxo is about break-even. It signed a deal with Comcast to offer contact synchronization services, and Comcast pays for that. Since 2001, Plaxo has raised $19.3 million in venture capital from Sequoia Capital, Globespan and Cisco. It also raised $6.7 in stock warrants two years ago.

Oh look! Stowe Boyd has a new photo:

Plaxo 3.0 [is] a real category shift, in many ways ... I see Plaxo breaking into two twinned parts: synchronization of various sorts of coordinative data caught up in calendars, address books and to-do lists (yawn... useful, but so twentieth century), and a new (less boring) collection of services that are traffic-and-flow based.

Pulse is another run at the Nerdvana meme I have been pursuing for a long, long time. The basic notion of Nerdvana is that we want to have updates of all sorts from our contacts collated into a buddylist representation, which is where Golub tells be Plaxo is headed. I could see Brian Solis' online presence, most recent status message, last five blog posts, and recent Flickr pictures, but linked to the buddylist icon for Brian ... I can't tell you how many IM companies I have have suggested this too, over the years, by the way. But again, we have to look to the upstarts to do the breakthroughs, I guess.

Buffer overflow:

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• Older posts

And finally... System.Windows.Forms.MessageBox.Show("Rhapsody")
 

Richi Jennings is an independent technology and marketing consultant, specializing in email, blogging, Linux, and computer security. A 20 year, cross-functional IT veteran, he is also an analyst at Ferris Research. Contact Richi at blogwatch@richi.co.uk.