Plaxo finally got bought, say valley whispers, and blog after blog have speculated incorrectly about who the buyer might be (first Facebook, then Google). Finally, someone may have gotten it right - Valleywag is saying that Comcast is the buyer, for $175m. That makes sense based on what we heard earlier today, too: that one of the cable players bought them, for something just under the $200 million previously rumored. Comcast is the most active buyer in the bunch. In fact, they’re getting a bit of a reputation as the guys who’ll look at any deal, and don’t quibble much on price. If no one else will take you, there’s always Comcast.
To be fair, some of my disdain for Comcast exists solely because they supply my cable and Internet at home, and really really suck at it. I believe I’ve spoken to every customer service rep they employ.
Plaxo did around $5 million in 2006 revenue, doubling that to $10-$12 million in 2007. 2008 projections are $20-$25 million. The company has 1.8 million worldwide visitors per month (Comscore).
Oh my god, Comcast is the definition of “dumb money.” Plaxo is a nice $50M company. Comcast looks really, really, really stupid at $175M.
“Comcast looks really, really, really stupid at $175M.”
Second that.
I actually like Comcast, I am very impressed by their On Demand HD offerings: good selection and good video compression quality. If they are trying to diversify best wishes to them.
That’s f-in Comcastic !
…i actually like Comcast Mike. Here’s why:
a) you can call them every few months and tell them you’re gonna switch to DSL and you can usually negotiate a 6-12 month promo deal where they’ll give you 30-50% off regular cable internet prices.
b) If you get cable internet, you also get free basic cable since, in my area at least, they haven’t figured out a way to turn off TV and still provide internet. What’s more is I just remove the screw-on filter to give me even more channels.
i, too, suffer with comcast as my tv and internet provider.
i lost my roadrunner service to comcast’s “service” … it’s a sad reality, comcast’s existence.
Plaxo has been growing at an incredible rate and offer a great service. I would put their value a lot higher than 200m.
Raul - yeah, the on demand HD stuff was great until all on demand stuff stopped working two months ago. customer service says it works fine and that I’m wrong. so there you go.
Michael,
I’m in the east bay and I’ve got Comcast for internet and cable. We’ve had tons of problems - random packet loss and timeouts for the internet (makes online gaming impossible) and some complete dropouts of video (TV) signal for several seconds every once and a while… oh and our DVR that they supplied us with occasionally freezes, shuts off, or ignores the controller. Apparently my housemate spoke with them last week and they said they’d do something. We’ll see.
So yeah, I sympathize.
Ohh and I forgot to mention, in my previous residence we had our internet connection randomly die several times. Every time it came back on at some point and they claimed they had no idea why. After more than a year of this, one of the reps finally came out and replaced the line from the street to our house, which solved the problem. You’d think they might notice a problem like that a little faster. (Also, unrelated, I looked in the part of the cable box that says you’re not supposed to open it. All I found were some cables and a HUGE SPIDER. So I guess I learned my lesson on that one.)
Yes, of course Plaxo’s revenues are doubling year after year. Who would doubt that? The only thing that this deal means (if true), is that someone at the top of Plaxo and the top of $cable_provider went to MBA school together. I mean really, $175MM in this market?
Is comcast one of the telco providers just about to be granted immunity from illegal wiretapping of the American public? My customer experience with them was awful too. If they buy Plaxo, I will delete my account.
Grrr, I hate Comcast… I had so many issues with them. When I called to complain the customer service rep told me he did not care. I said I was going to cancel my account and switch to Satellite, to which he replied “oh well, you will be back, 90% of people switch back”. What kind of customer service is that? Btw, two years later, still on satellite with DSL internet!
I just wonder how this is going to affect me with Plaxo. I am a paying customer for plaxo and a non-comcast user. Are they going to still provide this for outsiders or turn it in to a Comcast only feature. I guess I will have to wait and see how Comcast will screw up a great service.
I worked at Comcast for 7 years as a Workforce Management Analyst. I can give you an insiders view of why they are so bad if you are ever interested. As an example, they have a hiring and firing policy in their call centers that many directors and VP’s refer to as “Meat in the Seat”. Basically, if you can breathe, they will hire you to fill a seat. They don’t really care how rude you are to customers or if you even show up to your job regularly. I was the guy urging them to take action and route out the bad employees but was only successful about 1 out of every 20 or 30 attempts. It was one of the most frustrating experiences of my life.
Never had a problem with Comcast cable- it’s been very reliable. In fact, I use it with DynDNS for hosting a development server. Not a bad way to start a new website project with $250 in hardware.
Interesting purchase. At first thought, I wondered why? What is the synergy? Once the fog clears, though, it appears that Comcast needs more vertical properties to compete with Time Warner. Speculating on new New Media properties doesn’t seem like a bad play. If you see them at Home Depot looking at garden fencing, though, don’t be too surprised.
Plaxo can pay millions for an company. Which is the problem? They don’t really care how rude you are to customers or if you even show up to your job regularly. The people was urging them to take action and route out the bad employees but was only successful about 1 out of every 20 or 30 attempts. It was frustrating.
$175M is a lot..
If you have money you just don’t spend it on anything.. you spend it on good things..
1.8 M visitors per month? is that all..
I just wonder how this is going to affect me with Plaxo. I am a paying customer for plaxo and a non-comcast user.
Too bad comcast wouldn’t bid anything for that dog of a company Edgio.
This seems very likely — I got an email just last week from Comcast, bragging about their new integration with Plaxo. Basically, they have a new “powered by Plaxo” integration with social networks. A purchase would seem consistent with that…
Michael, please ban the IPs of comment #s 16 and 18.
Regurgitated excerpts of comments is annoying.
Comcast’s customer service is so unbelievably bad.
Puhleeeeze!…Don’t get me started on Comcast!
Comcast… now there’s a company you don’t immediately think of when it comes to web acquisitions. But with all these other media companies giving us reasons to be online, it makes sense for Comcast to want to branch out and buy companies like Plaxo.
Anyone know what Verizon has bought lately?
passing up this deals shows why google and facebook are so successful for passing up this deal - $175 million - only a telco desperate to get into this web 2.0 thing would pay that kind of dough for plaxo
flip side: plaxo’s webmail api is dope no doubt
btw- congrats to plaxo - nice flippin exit
So - THAT is why I got all those, “join plaxo” newsletters from Comcast!
I actually ended up joining, but don’t even like the service! So I will be deleting. I see no point in it.
That’s what I get for being bored on a weekend…I go and join sites! lol.
Comcast may look stupid as can be for paying $175,000,000 but you can bank on it that there going to be making up the $175M by charging and arm and a leg for the Plaxo service.
Well I hardly need cable and phone mostly because TV turns me off with all the crap on it daily and I have my prepaid cell phone from Virgin Mobile. However, I do need internet for news, social networking and fun in general, so I will be switching to DSL wherever I can find it.
Comcast seems like a good environment for Plaxo to go to slowly die.