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Overhype

by Mike Masnick

Tue, Jun 15th 2004 12:35am





More Hype For Plaxo

from the lazy-PR dept

You can always tell when a lazy PR person has been given the job to hype up some random startup in Silicon Valley. That's when the "profile" piece comes out, focusing almost entirely on the 22-year-old founder of a company, rather than the company itself or what it does. It looks like that's the latest strategy to hype up Plaxo, with a story that focuses on its young co-founders and the similarities the company has to Yahoo and Google - namely founded by two Stanford students and funded by Michael Moritz. Of course, the article leaves out the differences - such as the fact that a fair number of folks find Plaxo's service both annoying and creepy - and they're still searching for a business model. It also leaves out the fact that one of Plaxo's founders was recently forced out of the company, suggesting that not all is well at Plaxo central. I still fail to see how Plaxo is any more than a small feature of an email system - and the only thing I learned from this article is that the company likes to compare itself to multi-billion dollar companies that actually do have business models.

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  1.  
    identicon
    mike arkin, Jun 15th, 2004 @ 10:22am

    its great for me

    some people might find plaxo anoying, but I find it very very usefull for keeping my contacts up to date. All of my friends use it and its spread quite rapidly throughout my industry. stop being annoyed by it for a sec and you might realize how really usefull it is.

     

    [ reply to this | link to this | view in thread ]

  2.  
    icon
    Mike (profile), Jun 15th, 2004 @ 10:54am

    Re: its great for me

    How can I stop being annoyed by it when people I know are giving my personal info to some random company and then spamming me about it? I don't like the fact that they're giving my private info to a company, and I can't stand the fact that they feel it's okay to then spam me.

     

    [ reply to this | link to this | view in thread ]

  3.  
    identicon
    thecaptain, Jun 15th, 2004 @ 12:09pm

    No Subject Given

    everytime I read about this company and the hype surrounding it, I just get this one thought in my mind.

    zombo.com

     

    [ reply to this | link to this | view in thread ]

  4.  
    identicon
    mike arkin, Jun 15th, 2004 @ 1:22pm

    Re: its great for me

    well, if you are worried every time someone gives your contact info to some "random" company, then you have a lot more then plaxo to worry about. I've used a number of different services that allow me to keep my contact info on the net and every one of those is keeping your info just like plaxo. Frankly plaxo is no different then any other address book sync service (like fusion one which I'm lucky to use.) Are you going got get mad when I have your address in my yahoo address book, because that is the same thing?

    As for "spamming you" that is the most absurd thing ever. Plaxo does not spam. I choose contacts that I don't have info for and plaxo sends a mail out for me. Its not spam if I CHOOSE to have my mail client send you a mail.


    PS. this is from their privacy policy:

    Plaxo will not sell, exchange, or otherwise share Your Information with third parties, unless required by law or in accordance with your instructions.

    Plaxo does not send spam, maintain spam mailing lists, or support the activities of spammers.

     

    [ reply to this | link to this | view in thread ]

  5.  
    identicon
    JohnnyT, Jun 15th, 2004 @ 3:52pm

    google didn't have a business model

    When Google first launched and garnered its funding, it did not have a business model, just a vision to build the best search there is. I believe their business model may have been originally selling their search appliances to enterprise. Once they found their business model, they were obviously extremely successful. But saying Plaxo is lame because they don't have a business model just a great vision and good software is unfair.

     

    [ reply to this | link to this | view in thread ]


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