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P2P Contact Info Service From Napster Co-Founder
scrm writes "Plaxo is an interesting new service from Sean Parker, co-founder of Napster. It's a P2P-based add-on to Outlook that confronts the old problem of keeping contact lists up-to-date. Mozilla mail support is on the cards, and yes, the company does 'take privacy very seriously'. Check the press here(1), here(2) and here(3). You can also access your contact list over the web."
Well, I guess I will have to get this now. What could be more seruce that a P2P service based in Outlook. Better yet, I could start using AOL and Windows 98 too! It will be good times.
And how long do you think it'll take someone to make a contact list that is an all MP3's...
I'm not a prophet or a stone-age man,
I'm just a mortal with potential of a super man.
Because being able to follow networks of business relations and friendships is something that would be very valuable to many organizations. Perhaps more valuable than a happy user of their software, if you catch my drift.
Try not. Do or do not, there is no try.
-- Dr. Spock, stardate 2822-3.
If they really take privacy seriously, why do they act as "man-in-the-middle" of all transactions between their users? Who knows how many valid e-mail addresses they have collected. Their system has nothing to do with p2p-systems, it is in fact no more p2p-like than e-mail.
Worst of all, Plaxo users upload their contact lists containing personal information about others. That is without their acknowledgement.
Thanks Plaxo!
Sounds horrible. I can already drag contacts out of my address book and into iChat, and drag a contact out of iChat into my address book. Furthermore I can mail vCards to and from whomever I wish. Lastly, I can sync addressbooks via SyncML with whomever, and for large organizations, there are directory services. So it seems this Plaxo widget adds basically nothing to my existing abilities.
Cardscan's Accucard already does this- and has for quite some time. When you scan a card, you get the option to add it to Accucard, and the owner of the card(provided they have an email address) gets an email asking if the info is correct and if they'd like to keep their info up to date in the future. Any future copies of their card that get scanned automatically get the new info, I believe.
This is important, because Corex(makers of Cardscan) already have one big thing the P2P companies don't- they have their foot in the door already with their Cardscan units, which are owned by people who need this service the most- sales people and the like. It's like trying to sell gas to car owners, the two just go together. While some sales people may have P2P software on their systems, it's unlikely given the crackdown on p2p apps by many companies....and they're not about to put client information into some two-bit p2p program.
Please help metamoderate.
If you think about it, Plaxo is the perfect "built to be acquired" company. Read their "privacy policy" here:
"In the event Plaxo goes through a business transition, such as a merger, acquisition or the sale of a portion of its assets, Your Information and your membership in the Plaxo Contact Networks(TM) will, in most instances, be part of the assets transferred. You will be notified of an ownership change pursuant to Notification of Changes section of the privacy statement."
See that? They consider your information to be an asset. So, I wonder how long they're going to farm data before selling themselves to doubleclick? Imagine how valuable that data will be. Your surfing habits, matched with your personal information, matched with the personal information and surfing habits of all your 1st-degree friends, and all your friends' friends...
(Also notice that Plaxo (purposely) makes its full privacy policy difficult to link. It's a javascript popup)
The theory of relativity doesn't work right in Arkansas.
I already hate this software. I'm a network admin, and 3 users have installed Plaxo, two of them after I advised them not to.
One person in another part of the company installed it, and it emailed everyone in his contact list without asking, apparently. Two people under me showed me the email and asked about it; I did some research and decided that it sounded not only like a virus, but definitely against company policy as departmental contact info is sent outside the company.
Here is a rather critical article about Plaxo, followed by an update after speaking with the Plaxo people:
PCMag Article by Bill Machrone
Follow-up article that backs off a bit
I don't trust it, and it sounds like it would violate every large company information policy in existence.
The irony is that my company has an LDAP directory that each of these people use everyday, so WTF are they doing with a contact manager?