Comments on: OpenSocial Has Been Good To Plaxo

By: david murray

david murray — Sat, 03 Jan 2009 00:13:42 +0000

Plaxo used to be great.

Now I can’t make a ‘Plaxo’ invite without it becoming a ‘Pulse’ invite.

Very disappointed

- d

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By: Marc’s Voice » Blog Archive » Shopping Day blogging

Marc’s Voice » Blog Archive » Shopping Day blogging — Sat, 24 Nov 2007 10:07:07 +0000

[...] See! It pays to be open. Not sure how Plaxo makes money off of that – but who cares! It makes for GREAT copy! Congrats ot Joseph and John and everyone at Plaxo! [...]

By: document.write("Markus Tressl");

document.write("Markus Tressl"); — Wed, 21 Nov 2007 19:43:54 +0000

OpenSocial meint es gut mit Social Networks…

Von vielen Seiten wurde OpenSocial, Google’s Initiative zur Vernetzung von Social Networks untereinander, bereits belächelt oder sogar schon als Flop bezeichent.Die Macher von Plaxo werden jedoch ganz……

By: victor

victor — Wed, 21 Nov 2007 09:04:33 +0000

And has someone successfully installed and test an OpenSocial application in Plaxo ?
I still wait a validation for my application

By: Moolaxo

Moolaxo — Tue, 20 Nov 2007 19:38:04 +0000

Thanks John for the personal reply. So just to make sure I understand, you guys announce OS with Google, you get some attention and some new users. Those new users have, let’s say, an average of 100 contacts identified as family, friends, or business associates. So then is it fair to say that all of this hullabaloo is all about (1M Connections divided by 100 Connections/New User) or ~10,000 new users? Doesn’t Facebook do that in an hour? What’s more interesting to me is the data prior to the OS announcement. If I extrapolate YOUR OWN chart backwards in time, it looks like you had little to no connections a year(?) ago. I know that’s not true. But it’s even fishier and taints the overall graphic. Sorry for the scrutiny, but I am very learned in lying with statistics, and am very skeptical (as are many others here) when a company releases a graphic that looks like the “Big Finish” slide from a VC pitch in 1998. I am even more surprised that Michael A. didn’t raise any of these issues and immediately went to the “attaboy.” I guess it’s still true that success kills objectivity, especially in the media. I’ll be looking for the “Fox News buys TechCrunch” announcement soon…

By: will

will — Tue, 20 Nov 2007 18:38:11 +0000

thank you John. I will follow up with you individually.

By: John McCrea

John McCrea — Tue, 20 Nov 2007 16:59:35 +0000

Thanks, Jeff. Hey, Will, I certainly take issue with what you are saying, and would like the opportunity to set the record straight. If you believe you have received a connection request from someone who did not actually send it to you, please forward it to me. I’m john at plaxo dot com.

By: Jeff the Great

Jeff the Great — Tue, 20 Nov 2007 16:41:40 +0000

Kudo’s to John for coming to TechCrunch and talking with us.

By: will

will — Tue, 20 Nov 2007 06:39:13 +0000

John McCrea , I would like you to come clean please. Tell us exactly what you changed about the way you send out invite emails to join pulse. I recieved a significant # of the last few weeks from EXISTING contacts I have on plaxo. Neither them nor I authorized these emails.

By: Arjun

Arjun — Tue, 20 Nov 2007 06:12:16 +0000

# of connections? seriously, what a horrible metric to use.

By: www.CARversation.com

www.CARversation.com — Tue, 20 Nov 2007 05:11:05 +0000

but it hasn’t been good to me.

By: John McCrea

John McCrea — Tue, 20 Nov 2007 04:41:36 +0000

In addition, a “connection” in Pulse, because it gets characterized by the two people connected, serves as the basis for a more granular control of sharing.

For example, in Pulse, I may choose to share my blog and Twitter feeds with my Business Network, my Last.fm and Yelp feeds with my Friends, and my Flickr feed with my Family.

As a result of this rich permission model, real conversations emerge within Pulse. (As opposed to the sophomoric comment streams that we somtimes see on public sites.)

By: John McCrea

John McCrea — Tue, 20 Nov 2007 04:36:32 +0000

A “connection” on Pulse is similar to a “friend” on Facebook or a “Connection” on LinkedIn. It is bi-directional and volitional. What is different about a connection on Pulse, as compared with these other examples, is that all connections on Pulse get characterized (by the participants) as family, friend, business network, or some combination of those.

When you hear terms like “social graph,” it refers to all of the users and how they are connected. So, how many connections that exist (and the trend over time in the rate of connection) is one of several key measures of a social site.

By: Moolaxo

Moolaxo — Tue, 20 Nov 2007 04:23:58 +0000

OK, so I’ve read the original post, John M.’s reply and still don’t have the answer to this seemingly simple question – “What is a connection?” Please provide a simple answer in non-Plaxo terms. Anything else will sound like marketing/PR jibberish… Any wonder why there is sooo much skepticism here from the original post? Sorta like our ongoing “progress” in Iraq…

By: Google Android

Google Android — Tue, 20 Nov 2007 03:59:36 +0000

I have never heard of plaxo until today. Myspace and YouTube are going to make plaxo popular.

By: Ryan Merket

Ryan Merket — Tue, 20 Nov 2007 03:34:43 +0000

Connections != users.

By: Jessica Mah

Jessica Mah — Tue, 20 Nov 2007 03:21:29 +0000

I have noticed a LOT more emails from Plaxo recently… and to be honest, they’re getting incredibly annoying.

By: Goboz

Goboz — Tue, 20 Nov 2007 03:01:22 +0000

John (#18) is correct…it has to do with the launch of Plaxo Pulse (check the date).

I am sure I am counted as a “new connection” even though I have never used Plaxo. I got an email from a friend that does use it saying he has added me to his Plaxo Pulse.

This is marketing B.S. and it is too bad because they seemed to have already been a good/well respected company.

By: Jon

Jon — Tue, 20 Nov 2007 02:48:36 +0000

Plaxo has done extremely well… their current server problems are a GOOD problem to have, not a bad one… shows they where unprepared for such a ramp-up… and to be honest, I doubt many could have predicted this as well.

Jon

By: John McCrea

John McCrea — Tue, 20 Nov 2007 02:14:58 +0000

Indeed it is neither the Google OpenSocial APIs nor the early OpenSocial apps that caused the inflection point. It was the enormous interest in the “open” story that sent a wave new (and old) users into the Plaxo Pulse offering. That kicked off a (sustained) wave of more rapid growth in new users and an accleration in the rate adding connections. Very cool to see how that rate did not drop back down after the initial PR wave. We’ll see where it all goes from here, but I stick by my claim that “open” is good for business. My full blogpost is here: http://blog.pla..._pulse_res.html

By: Duncan Riley

Duncan Riley — Tue, 20 Nov 2007 02:04:55 +0000

Don’t get me wrong, I actually love Plaxo for its syncing ability (the Mac plugin is great) but I interested as to how OpenSocial is the reason for the rise. Is it perhaps more brand exposure related than any Opensocial implementation itself? I just cant see there being a rush into Plaxo as a result of opensocial widgets…but I can see their name getting exposure increasing signups.

By: Erik

Erik — Tue, 20 Nov 2007 01:20:25 +0000

Umm… What *exactly* does this spike have to do with OpenSocial? Are there even any OpenSocial apps on Plaxo?

By: Cindi

Cindi — Tue, 20 Nov 2007 00:38:26 +0000

“the number of connections on Plaxo has skyrocketed from about 200,000 to over a million.”

Reminds me of typical hype-speak to razzle and dazzle any potential investor.

Similarly to counting “hits” as a way of measuring how popular a website is (and comparing that to, say, unique visitors of other sites).

The plaxo blog was non-helpful in defining what that actually means.

But it sure does sound good.