So Plaxo’s new social network, called Pulse (we wrote about it last month), is still extremely buggy. Robert Scoble and Matt Marshall say it launches properly on Monday, so hopefully they’ll have the kinks worked out by then. For now, it’s live but doesn’t really work.
Plaxo has effectively turned itself into a social network. In terms of users, the biggest overlap will be with the professional crowd - LinkedIn. But the new functionality and interface is all Facebook. In particular, users can add streams of data about themselves, such as blog posts, flickr photos and Amazon Wishlists. You can then see all your friends’ streams on the site. It is nearly identical to Facebook’s News Feed, which launched last year.
Nick Gonzalez loves the fact that Pulse is an open platform and compared it favorably to Facebook. I don’t disagree with what he wrote. But I noted some fairly venomous comments to that post by readers who say they can never trust Plaxo after all of the spamming complaints in the company’s early years.
Will users flock to Plaxo and use Pulse in the same way that they use Facebook today? I don’t think they will. Facebook invented the news feed for social networks. Playing catch up is always hard. And when you are still fighting reputational issues, it becomes harder still.
Even so, I’ve created a new account at Plaxo after long ago abandoning the service. I like that the news feed is not limited to Plaxo applications, and I intend to give it a fair shot. Perhaps it will steal some of my attention away from Facebook. We’ll see.
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No, the spam connection is too fresh in the mind I think. That kind of thing isn’t easily forgotten.
I love Plaxo — when it works. The good news is that I have had a pretty good experience for several years. I really like the idea of their new abilities to sync with Google and Yahoo’s calendar. The problem is that they don’t work. The Google calendar sync has been disabled by Plaxo for two weeks. Every time you log into Plaxo, there is a sad little hippo in the top corner saysing that it’s disabled, but that they are working on it. Since the inception of Pulse, my personal blog entries have shown up with some random guys name attached to them. I really, really do like what Plaxo does for my address book, but they sure do make it hard to love them sometimes.
For the love of god, is anyone else getting tired of these cookie cutter social networks? Seriously, you might approach the market in a different way, or approach a different audience–but you’re really no different than anything else that was already available! You are not innovating! You are not going to topple MySpace, Facebook, or LinkedIn!
Look people, want to create a viable social network? Make it do something different. Make it relevant and substantial to everyday life. Because…
-My most important, most relevant conversations (other than in person) are still conductedvia email, text message (sad), or phone convo.
-replying to job postings, networking in person, and pounding the pavement are still the best ways to find a job.
-I STILL don’t give a f*ck what my friends are doing right this very second, or that they changed their username.
I deleted my social networking accounts long, long ago, and let me tell you something: it didn’t effect my REAL life one single effing bit. That’s because MS, FB, and the like are NOVELTIES, and don’t do anything important. Stop kidding yourself.
Please, go away and figure out how to make your network do something important…and don’t come back until you do.
/Web 3.0/4 FTW
//Man, I feel like that one guy that’s always ranting nonsense on here
///I am drunk, though
////Fark slashies
Google nowadays takes special care if your calendar is synced with Plaxo. They would restore it even if you delete it on Plaxo. The Social network thing is inherent for something like Plaxo. Till now the update feeds were about ‘contact’ information. If they could aggregate more Social interactions over the web for every user and expose it in a non-spammy(no email) way - it would be better. People, Facebook is no legacy, its just so new - and can be beaten - even otherwise;)
I want to like Plaxo but in the end it just lacks that last little bit that sucks you in. Though the fact that my Facebook account is down again for maintenance for the last two hours is starting to become a hassle…
We all are bored of Social networks. I think more and more people will feel same in near future. It will be a hard task for owner to make it popular.
Spam is not easily forgotten - I was so turned of by their shady features - I tell everyone about why they should not use Plaxo. I have prohibited my employees from using Plaxo. In this world only movie stars and tele evanagelists get absolution (and that too till they dissappear on their own). The rest of us are mere mortals. Although in all fairness - everyone out there including LinkedIn (a service I still use as a business tool) are beginning to show varying mutations of the Plaxo Syndrome.
My roots are with Facebook and don’t want to try a copycat social network with a poor reputation at this time.
Plaxo has some limited value as a means of backing up contacts. It would have more value if it actually synced with Google. It has no value as a social network and it seems there are enough people wasting time in other networks now - enough is enough. If I had to pay for it, I would not use it.
I think we all have to remember anything new has its bugs and needs time to work them out. I’ve been pleased with plaxo..nothing starts out perfect. Good luck with the launch and I’ll be watching.
Regards, Dorothy from grammology
I’ve never liked Plaxo. I get about a million emails from them (despite almost never using it), and when I did use it, I wasn’t impressed. This actually doesn’t look too bad though, maybe I’ll give it a shot.
@bdb here comes another one…
Profilactic, which was mentioned on TC last weekend, offers a similar feature, called a Mashup, that is more configurable than either Facebook or Plaxo.
Here’s mine:
http://www.profilactic.com/mashup/smorty71
You can combine your own stuff into a single page (and RSS feed) and all of your friends’ stuff into a separate page (and RSS feed). You can even take your stuff with you using a badge that displays your latest Mashup items.
“Facebook invented the news feed for social networks.”
Seriously? I think the credit here goes to Multiply. Our news feed was introduced when Multiply launched in early 2004, three years before Facebook tacked on their news feed. For Multiply it isn’t an add-on or feature, its the cornerpiece of our social commuications platform.
To quote Marshall’s writeup here on TechCrunch:
“I prefer Multiply’s handling of media items and NEWS FEEDS from your network of contacts. Vox is beautiful, Multiply is more functional.”
I am prepared to give Plaxo another try because the CTO in charge is new and working hard to include “open standards” - openid, microformats and is working to integrate plaxo with other services. e.g Plaxo sync’s with my Mac Address Book.
So this week when Google announced support for microformats, I could search for a business on maps.google.com find the hcard and with one-click add it to my address book which then sync’d to my plaxo account.
Try finding a person on Facebook and adding their contact details to another service you may use.
So before writing off plaxo/pulse I am prepared to try it first with an open mind not a closed (facebook only) mindset.
Then I will review it and make a judgement. Seems odd that some people have written it off before they tried it.
I would like to think that we value our personal data too much to make it available to a buggy system.
Do we really need another SN?
I guess everyone is trying to get a piece of the Web 2.0 pie.
Yes, I agree about Plaxo…it’s a love affair that never really blossomed or got off the ground for that matter!
Plus I am hearing a lot of negative rumblings about social networks and wonder if they will soon turn into thunder…
For me: Plaxo = tainted goods
Somehow I don’t like the name Pulse. It seems too serious.
The core functionality still makes me happy. The ability to keep your address information up-to-date. My address books now syncs across my 2 macs at home and my office PC with windows mobile phone. Now these are too many touch points but so far Plaxo has been doing good. There are some issues with duplicates. Premium service resolves the problem of duplicates but how the hell the info gets duplicated, I don’t know. I think it is induced in the free service so that you buy the paid one.
Too late to the game. Get new developers, get new mgmt!
Mike,
Ahem, 30 Boxes started the news feed for social networks as Buddy Updates.
Funny. I could be said to be receiving “pulses” of spam over the past couple of months: always 5-7 emails of the same subject line at the same time.
That said, the Facebook API development is a watershed event in social networks, but it looks like people are still thinking of “social network” as something owned and closed off. I guess if the VCs are suckers for that story I can’t blame Web2.0.1beta MBAs for exploiting it, but as far as the internet goes it’s getting a little old.
I too wish to like it but damned if it just isn’t facebook and being Canadian, I am facebook OCD…. argh
Plaxo is great, I have used it for 3+ years. However, the world is NOT ready for another social network circled around Plaxo especially. Members like plaxo because of it’s simplicity, organization and it’s core idea.
Not sure they are ready to take it to the next level
Not a chance. Plaxo has NEVER shown the slightest respect for its users…force-updating contact info, etc.
None of their software will ever be on my system again.
Robert Scoble indicates, I think correctly, that Facebook is going to remain the most popular social network site. However, I’m confident that there will be room for the likes of Plaxo. In a world of multiple social network sites there’s a need for an aggregate site that allows users to combine different sites, catering to different niches, onto one platform. Enter MyLifeBrand.com. Take a look at it, it’s incredible. http://www.mylifebrand.com
I didn’t trust Plaxo couple years back because of the spam, but now I do. It’s been making some interesting and well-intentioned moves, such as an open platform and the pledge to stop spam. Companies change, and I am willing to give Plaxo one more try (which I did).
I am happy to see that social identities are becoming more standardized and portable, just like how we can move our OPMLs across different readers. This is what aggregators like ours, http://www.spokeo.com and http://www.peopleaggregator.com, have been trying to push for. And I am happy that Plaxo shares our thoughts.
If New Plaxo “2.0″ can steal the laurels, I say good on it. But at last check (about five minutes ago just to be sure I wasn’t talking out my ass) I saw this:
“XXXXX has been temporarily disabled. We are working diligently to resolve the problem. Sorry for the inconvenience.”
A few months ago XXXXX was working, and YYYYY was not. When I pointed that out I was told that “yeah we know about that but it’s in the too hard basket…” and is still in the too hard basket. Pulse has actually got less functionality now compared to back then. And to top it off there is a serious problem in the Pulse RSS reader.
That’s the problem, nothing is stable enough to offer any real competition yet. So to get around FB’s “walled garden” as Scoble puts it, I tend to keep my content off that site and link it instead. I will keep checking back on Plaxo but at this stage I won’t be transferring my affections totally to it.
As some people have pointed out, there are more social networking sites, and Next Shiny Object Syndrome (NSOS) will keep driving a significant portion of people to those new startups - but in order to keep those people they either have to have a compelling product a la Twitter or else a degree of useability equivalent to Facebook.
Mike, your writing skills are going downhill…
Thinking about Plaxo makes me tired.
@28: My prediction is that there will be profile hosting services and profile feature providers.
How many websites are going to steal/clone/imitate Facebook (not sure if they are the originator)? I would like to see something new. Seriously, I need another social network site like I need another hole in my head.
I like how they spend all that effort on the front page telling me how they work the way I want to work and how integrated and wonderful they are, so I sign up and THEN it tells me it only supports two browsers and mine isn’t one of them. Sheesh.
Michael, so why does Spoke (www.spoke.com) never get mentioned when talking about people search and business people social networks? Just not on your radar?
Plaxo is just too advanced for me…I mean this sync and all…it created all kinds of duplicate entries in my google calendar and then deleted my calendar. Luckily Google restored my calendar.
No more new social networks…please.