Apparently Plaxo is for sale as per Mike at Tech Crunch. Plaxo has hired an investment banker to help them sell the company. As per last rumors, Plaxo was supposed to be acquired by Xing, but apparently it did not happen….

I am really happy for the Plaxo guys as I already explained above why do I think those should sell the things ASAP…
and it’s also nice to see that the 2008 is starting with such a strong market shake! So good luck to the followers

Doesn’t say who the offer came from.

it’s a nice posting and it has gathered lots of people interested in the fate of Plaxo… so I couldn’t also keep me away from commenting here it ‘coz of the two strong reasons-

a. the name of Plaxo CEO’s sound like a honey for my eyes- I am also Golub
b. you said Plaxo is a competitor of Xing.

So about the name- it’s everything clear I suppose. That was just another reason for me to follow Plaxo since the very beginning when it was still really a spamming tool (and I used it exactly to contact the people I couldn’t contact in any other way :lol:). I am Premium user of Plaxo for the years and I really love it as the Address-Book. as my Network-based very reliable and useful Address-Book. and everybody were happy until the Address-Book hasn’t decided to become Social Network

now about Xing. I think it’s known for everyone here that Xing has recently acquired Neurona, and even before eConozco. Those were useful to Xing to become larger and always more powerful. In EU and not only (Spanish Networks have some great popularity in the Latin America). In EU as I believe everybody know, the Networks that claim themselves the competitors of Xing are Viadeo first of all and Ecademy. but it’s clear that Xing is much more powerful.
Xing is a European LinkedIn as I see it (being myself co-founder and VP of the first in the world Official LinkedIn Supporter Club in Italy). So here who will buy who- it could happen that Xing will eat now Viadeo, or LinkedIn will buy them all :)… Or who knows, as the rumors were telling LinkedIn will be put together with MySpace under the roof of News Corp… we’ll see it soon, maybe already in 2008!

OK, those are the giants of Professional/ Business Networking. But what’s the relations of Plaxo with Business Networking? hm……….

I think the project that could be compared with Plaxo as it is now, is probably Spock- the People Search Engine 2.0.
What’s the reasoning of the people that will probably buy Plaxo?
Traffic generated by the web site? So here Plaxo and Spock are already on a very similar position- have a look at Alexa’s picture: http://tinyurl.com/2kg2xl
although Plaxo is a 5 years “start-up” and Spock has only few month of life!

what else? The prospects? It depends on the ideas and ambitions under the project!

So those two projects are the right pair to compare I think AT THE MOMENT, although the initial ideas of these two projects were very opposite- Plaxo have grown from a Personal/ Private Address-Book to a Social Network behind it, and Spock arrives from another side- it’s goal is firstly to become a Global Who’s Who + community (2.0) for the whole Web World, and then to apply the personal networking features around my profile. And to be able making this- the concept of Trust there was since the very beginning on Spock. And the concept of Plaxo, I think it has remained the same as it was in the beginning- just connect to everyone and be happy… boh!

have a look- on Plaxo what it was there? It was MY PERSONAL Address-Book, and one day I see that my PERSONAL contacts have started living their own social life… sincerely that made me crazy in the beginning… and lots of another Bloggers were writing about that Plaxo is crazy to have started from an Address-Book and to go Global. a strange way, I think it’s a wrong way and the idea of 2007 that every good project (as a GREAT Address-Book, Plaxo) must “grow” to a Social Network- I wouldn’t agree it should work for everyone!

I think it’s a very risky and strange idea. So for myself I decided to not participate in the Social Life of my Address-Book :). also because I am used to more classical professional networking tools, such as LinkedIn and Xing- those are the great leaders both and have studied a lot from my point of view the philosophy of BUSINESS/ PROFESSIONAL Networking.

The same is true about Facebook and MySpace- those are great Networks oriented to Poke-my-friends and Content-is-everything, and those are greatly optimized for that.

And what’s about Plaxo?! An Address-Book that has started living its own Social Life? well, maybe somebody is happy about that, those people that are gonna pay those mega-millions to buy it have some personal reasoning I am sure. But I sincerely think that Plaxo is gonna sell itself ASAP, since if it’s not sold, the people will loose their interest to it, having seen what’s going on around in every direction- that of LinkedIn/Xing for Business, the one of Spock for Global Who’s Who, and Facebook- the best Social tool ever for me

after all said, I invite all you who think that the Web should be Global, should be 2.0 and there should be a way to manage IN ONE PLACE our Network Identity- have a look at Spock, http://www.spock.com

btw, you’ll find me there and we could network as a trusted buddies :)-
http://www.spock.com/Andrey-Golub

(and for the record i don’t Skype was a bad move, but probably more synergy with PayPal than for eBay proper. again, at least they were trying to find a few levers.)

Sorry, Plaxo - the only value you got is the private data of your users. Thats why I just deleted my account.

r*

PayPal has 150M+ accounts (ok, & we know that’s inflated slightly for 1-time usage, but ditto for Plaxo 20M+); why do they need another 10-20, probably with some overlap already?

i might understand why eBay corp would want a email / social networking asset, except they already have Skype IM data. if eBay really wants some synergy, they should acquire / private-label an email hosting provider & offer it to eBay users free in exchange for spam/fraud reduction (which is a big problem, owning 1 or both ends of buyer-seller email would help improve). altho note that probably works better in reverse with MSFT acquiring EBAY, altho that deal’s been rumored forever. still makes sense tho, imho.

maybe i’m missing something here — what’s the logic behind PayPal interest in Plaxo data?

whether or not theyre worth north of $250M i dunno… guessing the post-money on the last round is north of $75M (altho might have been a flat or down round, anyone know? 3rd & 4th rounds looked like corp-mezz rounds, so maybe not)

still with ~20m users + more indirect thru partners, there is value there somewhere. depends on whether new Pulse strategy works if modest vs larger value. otherwise, guessing latent usage among those 20m, perhaps more like single digit M active base.

got to give them credit for sticking it out & continuing to innovate tho.

Not worth $250M though, that’s ridiculous. Are they even profitable? Anybody, anybody ?

The Bill of Rights. Suppose we’d thank you Mike, if all this is true.

Their offering has always been very promising but has always had flaws. Their premium service, with good features such as de-duplication and strange ones such as e-cards, is too expensive (US$60/year). Their technology is sometimes buggy (calendars are a real mess!) and their UI has a lot of room for improvement.

To me, the possibility that they’ve put themselves up for sale comes as a shock: it’s a whole lot of really important data their users have entrusted them. And now, just as things were getting interesting, that we actually wanted to see more from them, they pull this off?

I’m waiting for real facts, but find the idea rather… disgusting. Hoping this is all fake.

I agree that a connected universal address book is a valuable service, but the fact that Plaxo’s is selling out is a failure of their business model.