Gerüchte über eine mögliche Übernahmen von plaxo zu xing ist derzeit im Umlauf. Xing ist in Deutschland sehr erfolgreich, aber in den USA konnte es sich bis jetzt nicht wirklich gut durchsetzen. Wenn es wirklich zur Übernahme k…

I just don’t see the same issue with social networks, and don’t care if some dba there reads my “messages” or look at my photos or even relationship status. I do not upload sensitive data like personal notes, cell numbers, home addresses etc. to facebook, myspace etc. I very much care if Plaxo one decides to sell that database. Personally I would LOVE to get MY hands on that db. Pure gold.

@Dru- I believe this is actually being bashed around in the courts right now. They own the medium, i.e. the tools, for dispersing the data but the content that you actually type, and what you put up in your profile is yours (I’ve not read every social network’s terms of use but our lawyers have been following this point closely for my own company).

http://uk.betas...com/q?s=O1BC.DE

Is Mike correct that this is a Chinese company (with German headquarters), or is it a German company?

われわれは現在XingのPlaxo買収の噂をあちこちから聞いている。金額は$250M（2億5千万ドル）前後の規模という。これはうなずけないこともない。最近株式を公開したXingはドイツの企業で、….

I was nervous about giving them all of my email addresses, but I had to take the chance. I’ve not been contacted since.

I have to belive that Plaxo really had to change their biz strategy at some point. I interviewed there several years ago and advanced (after 10 hours of interviews) to thier meet with their co-founders. After mock product meetings, programming tests, logic puzzles, actually working at someones workstation to fix 3 bugs…..I’m sitting in a conference room with the two founders. They ask me silly questions, like whether I like to play video games….finally they ask if I have any questions…..I bring up the ol’ “How will Plaxo make money? I’ve heard about this end-game, master plan, tell me more.”

The next few minutes changed my entire perspective of this company that seemingly had a vaulable service. They told me about how much it costs companies (newspapers, magazines, credit cards, insurance companies, etc, junk mailers of all kinds) to keep up with your address. That they pay for your address upwards of $1 a lead. They told me that with Plaxo, they know your address whenever it changes, they were the first to know and therefore could undercut other companies.

As someone who values their privacy I was shocked. Myspace, Facebook, etc… do not ask for your address (Facebook does but I don’t fill it in). Otherwise everyone is asking for your email address and I trust my spam filter to do a pretty good job of blocking that. But nothing is worse than 10 pieces of mail and 9 of them are junk. The Earth doesn’t need that kind of spam.

Anyhow, I believe that Plaxo has probably changed their business model after all the criticism they received, so this is all probably not a real issue anymore. Or maybe the founders were having fun with me, because they never offered me a job and probably didn’t want me to know the “master plan”. But either way, kind of shady if you ask me.

Anyways, this news is interesting and the first I’ve heard about this Xing deal. Hopefully, we’ll get more info about that here.

Cheers!

Im US-Blog Techcrunch wird wieder mal heftig spekuliert. Diesmal über das Business-Social-Network Xing (früher auch als OpenBC bekannt): "We are hearing a LOT of chatter about a possible Xing-Plaxo merger in the $250 million range. The deal make…

I more than anyone say that Plaxo isn’t social networking. I like to say, “Use LinkedIn to build your business network; use Plaxo to maintain that network.” or s/LinkedIn/Facebook/ s/business/college/ (what have you).

But I was talking about VIRALITY: This step that is most annoying about this and where the “Plaxo is evil” statements directly come from. And in that sense all these companies are the same.

Have you joined a social network recently? I do as part of my job and every social network has importers where they spam your address list. For me, because of http://preview.plaxo.com/ , the sites they import from (Yahoo, Google, AOL, MSN) ALL contain the same information as my desktop address book.

Finally, LinkedIn has a tool that seems to be just that access to “just that” information you are talking about http://www.link...oolbar_download . And since their connection network is far more prevalent among business users http://blog.bea...rking_proj.html
and that connection network is PUBLIC (they are a social network after all) http://www.link...n.com/in/tychay it is definitely more dangerous and less private.

The only difference here is that Plaxo legally binds themselves NOT to have access to those things you say and this binding forces them to NOT make that content public. Whereas the other social networks do not bind themselves and do make that content public.

I think there is a deeper problem here that we’re talking around. The problem is that Plaxo DOES maintain that YOU own your contact database and the problem with that ownership is it can’t be shared. What I mean is that the repal problem with Plaxo is that if I add Michael Arrington to my address book and sync that with Plaxo, Michael doesn’t have any control of that information nor is Plaxo empowered to do anything about that (because it’s my information, not Michael’s, but it is information OF Michael). In a simple sense that’s no different that a rolodex. But when you network up that rolodex… This needs to be addressed and discussed. We are having this discussion today and will have more in the future as social networking becomes more prevalent.

I won’t deny that. Nor will I defend it. I don’t even work at Plaxo anymore and I was just an engineer there when I did. There is a feeling that you don’t control things (even if it isn’t true) and that feeling is REAL. It leads people to justifiably gripe about Plaxo. It was the source of the huge blowup about Newsfeed and Facebook.

But to think that social networks aren’t doing the same as Plaxo (or worse) with YOUR contact information and YOUR contact network is either naïve or placing blind trust in incompetence.

http://terrycha...o-is-spam.shtml

Guess the birthday hangover is getting to me.