Soocial Makes Plaxo Look Lame (Beta Invites)
Erick Schonfeld
79 comments »
Okay, making Plaxo look lame isn’t that hard. But as Plaxo has been groping around the past year trying to turn itself into a social network to attract a buyer (cough, Comcast), a little startup in the Netherlands called Soocial has been building a kick-ass contact management service that syncs all of your contacts between your desktop, cell phone, and a growing list of Web services. This company won one of the vote-in demo spots at the Next Web conference in Amsterdam (CEO Stefan Fountain pictured above), and their video demo featuring David Hasselhoff (shown below) stole the show. TechCrunch has 300 invites to the beta that you can grab here.
Soocial is not yet everything it could be, but it has a lot of potential, and its approach to syncing contacts is the right one. Right now, it supports an impressive 400 phones, contacts in Gmail, 37Signals’ Highrise CRM app, and contacts in your Mac address book on your desktop. (You gotta love a startup whose beta software works only on a Mac.) Support for Outllook on Windows machines is coming soon, as is syncing with LinkedIn, and contacts in Windows Live and Yahoo.
With all of these services and devices, if you add a contact in one, it updates your contact list and details everywhere else. This two-way syncing is what is really impressive. It even works with the iPhone, although only by syncing through iTunes on the desktop. Soocial also has a lame Facebook app, because Facebook does not allow syncing of contacts yet.
As more services open up with data portability and open APIs, Soocial will add them as well. All Soocial wants to do is sync your contacts no matter where you keep them. It is not trying to be a social network, and it is not trying to grow by spamming its users friends. “Not everybody has friends, but everybody has contacts,” says Fountain.
The startup is based in Arnhem, the Netherlands, and has raised 300,000 Euros from angel investors. It was founded in November, 2006. The business model is unclear, but the founders hope to be able to charge subscriptions to power users. Enjoy the video:
Hassle Free from Soocial on Vimeo.
(Photo by Anne Helmond)
Neat site and features ..
Hell ya I got in.
I got in too. Still waiting for my drop box beta invite though….
Looks like you ‘crunched them. The site is timing out now.
yep.. site went down.. hope that won’t happen with my contacts!
Excellent demo video.
I want, I want! Site appears to be dead.
Looks like the network is bogging down, some sort of network surge!
We’re looking at what we can do to fix it.
@Federico… and no your contacts are safe in Soocial!
Hoff’s still big in Holland. And Germany.
Great video
lol. The site is already down.
Yeah - you crunched them.
Hi Guys,
We’re experiencing a lot of traffice due to this article. The server is fine but it seems like we’re having some trouble accepting so many connections on our hosting network. It’s up but its slow at the moment. We’re working on it.
cheers and thanks!
Simon
Soocial.com
Great new web 2.0 service.
We will hear about it in the next months for sure.
Soocial rocks! My contacts do so too!
I want a cheeseburger…
@stefan: finally, a master contact list across everywhere! here’s to hoping you get outlook functionality soon. i would sure pay for such a service. oh, but the website has to work.
Booya, snagged one for the buddy.
To compensate for the slowness of the site, the first 150 people to email to support@soocial.com will get an invite.
cheers and our apologies for this inconvenience,
Simon
Soocial.com
Hmm, they might want to update that video, he said “in a nutcase” (at 2:12) instead of “in a nutshell”, which conjures up somewhat negative images of padded rooms and straitjackets.
the reg code is TC-MONKEY-BALLS. that’s pretty funny.
I wondered why Plaxo was trying to become a social network. Sorry but that not in the cards broseph. You should have stuck to your original plans…
Sure, I’ll trust them with my contacts when they couldn’t even take a little TC traffic.
Anyway, try https instead of http.. I got in using https instead
@Will (#18), that looks like a Dutch idiosyncrasy creeping in. Cut us Europeans a bit of slack, we might surprise you.
Yep, getting crunched but using the code above got me through the signup page which I could get to load!
will you idiots please do some load testing ? for fox sake
sorry for the slugginess guys, we’re working on it and should be much faster already.
Dracula…have some VC money to pay for some load balancing?
@Will (#18) that was actually a pun, see our slide from our last presentation http://img.skitch.com/20080416.....dbwww4.png
To everyone else, we’re working very hard to get the server back up, seems like a weird mix of server sweating it’s ace off, and network congestion at our datacenter.
It works fine in the Netherlands.
@Simon from Soocial , what kind of hosting infrastructure are you guys using?
Looks like you guys are using RoR? One suggestion- page cache your landing and signup pages
8700 blackberry not supported. sad pants.
the invites are gone (that was fast!) - but still some of the 150 invites left over if you mail support@soocial.com
@Khang Toh,
Yeah we’re on RoR. We’ve page cached them, but thanks for the suggestion anyway.
@r if you can sync your blackberry with your Apple addressbook it’ll sync on straight from there with Soocial.com
@Soocials: Just curious how large is your pack (mongrels)?
Hmm… I got it to synch with my gmail just fine, but for some reason validation fails when I try to set up the mail.app connection.
Anyone out there seen this issue? I couldn’t find it on soocial’s page.
Khang Toh, you can talk to us @ our Campfire: https://soocial.campfirenow.com/7b5d4
Seems pretty useless unless you have a mac. No clear way to sync gmail, etc…contacts and not all phones sync. I for one was very disappointed. Search box on the support doesn’t work, and when I asked in chat, as suggested on their site, I got no help.
Back on the contact management hunt…
@Daniel - Looks like today is not Soocials day
Campfire says:
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
We can’t let you in right now
The limit of people who can chat in this account has been reached. As people come and go slots may open up.
You can try again at any time.
hey Melissa, sorry about that. We answered your question just after you left
The answer was anyways that we sync two says with GMAil using the Contacts API. If you go to ‘Connections’ you can add GMail to sync with.
Stefan, thanks for clearing that up, seemed a bit odd to me
Khang - upped the limit - but theres still a limit to it…sorry about that.
‘You gotta love a startup whose beta software works only on a Mac’
Ridiculous. I’m sorry, this is just a silly waste of time.
Are you using SyncML? If so, we can probably help.
Lou
Nexthaus
No Outlook support? How can they even attempt to become something useful when they don’t support the business world’s #1 email and contact client? I for one am very disappointed. I was looking forward for something to replace plaxo but I guess they are still too wet behind the ears…
@Lou, yeah we are using SyncML. We should talk
BTW Just to clear things up, we are hosted by RimuHosting. It was not their fault, but our own inexperience in getting crunched. They did an good job getting us up again. Their support is very good.
2 way syncing? i’ve had that via plaxo and my win/mac/winmo/gmail accounts for a LONG time.
what is so innovative?
The guy in the video has the right kind of glass for tastings - good for wines and hard liquors.
wet behind the ears? guilty!
in the end we’ll want to be supporting any software/webapp that manages contacts (if it makes sense).
Outlook is super high on our priority list and we’re working on it, so hopefully we’ll have it out soon.
uthiroid - plaxo does 2 way syncing with GMail? I’d like to see!
Plaxo works well to sync between my Mac, Outlook , Google contacts/calendar and iPhone.
Sorry for the potshot, but “Soocial” is a name only a hopeful acquisition target could love.
would love to see if tasks get synced though.
EH - Soocial has two o’s because all successful companies have two o’s….right?
Does any one know if they are giving invites through those who have been given an invite already. If so can someone send me one, pretty please
gabrielrodriguez81 (a) gmail.com
“No Outlook support? How can they even attempt to become something useful when they don’t support the business world’s #1 email and contact client?”
Cut these guys some slack. They’re an early startup, in beta phase. They can’t do everything at once and I bet they started with the platform that was familiar to them and what they’re good at. Sound advice for any startup. I’m sure the Outlook version will be out real soon, especially now with the pressure on them
Daniel,
I am sure that in the long run you will support outlook (you will not survive without that support), but I question your business plan to come out with a product that does not have that during its launch (even a beta launch). The challenge that you face is that I, just like many others, am overwhelmed with new companies coming out with new and “better” products that essentially provide features (granted, not all and some new) that existing product already provide. That means that companies such as your company has to be better than the existing products to succeed. Combine that with the fact that first impressions really count (Take Vista for example, great operating system when running on the right hardware but got really bad reviews from people who tried running them on hardware that was not strong enough) and you have an uphill battle to catch the attention of your potential customer and user base.
Supporting GMail and the Mac Address Book at your lauch (or introduction or whatever you want to call it) and not supporting Outlook will definitely deter a good portion of business people who are your real intended users.
I, for one, would have delayed the launch until my product was ready for the business world which does not include either GMail or the Mac Address Book.
Just my 2 cents…
Hm, I missed the boat on this one unfortunately, but perhaps someone can help - I am willing to swap an invite to Evernote or Skydeck if anyone has a spare Soocial invite. Perhaps one of the naysayers above for whom it wasn’t what they expected would like to transfer their account?
Hit me at dkr.smith at yahoo dot com if you are interested.
Thanks!
Kristoffer,
That is the same as telling a startup that releasing a website that only works on Opera or Safari is okay for a launch. Regardless of whether or not it is in beta, the intention of releasing it to techcrunch and other technology Blogs is to generate interest in it and to ramp up the numbers of users that actually sign up. That is always good for the meetings with the VCs and not necessarily the consumer. How many services that were in beta have you signed up for and not used because you found their limitations once you signed up?
As a product manager (I am a VP of Development) I would never release a business tool to a community (even if it is only beta) without providing features that would keep the user wanting to come back after the initial setup. Having Outlook support is definitely one of those for a contact management system such as this.
But, you are right in that hopefully, the added pressure will light a fire and outlook support will come out soon. Hopefully I will be able to get an invite at that point…
RollJ:
Granted, I have poked around plenty of startups without ever returning, but just because they don’t support Outlook doesn’t make them worthless. There are plenty of people who wouldn’t touch Outlook with a 10 foot pole. I’ve used Windows as my primary platform for 4 years now, and I haven’t ever used Outlook. Y! Mail handles all my email (I know gMail is popular too).
All you Outlook users stop your crying. Support for Outlook is coming. But the fact that it is currently Mac only certainly didn’t stop them EASILY distributing all of their invites. They are getting the feedback from the amount of users they want to allow to join. When they want more, they’ll ask for more. Until then, take your crying to Plaxo.
ok what is the usecase? how frequently do I do this? Do you need a seperate service from a seperate company to do this? simple questions.
The only problem is that in Europe, adding Hasselhoff to a video is all it takes to turn out a blockbuster success. It’s hard to read anything into the quality of features…
velioncho - the ideal way Soocial would work is that you don’t really “use” Soocial,
or at least it’s webapp.
It just works. You add a contact on lets say your phone, (auto)sync, and boom its in your computer/GMail whatever…
It works behind the scenes, so you don’t have to “manage” your contacts. An initial setup is required of course.
Does that answer your questions?
Best program ever for the 300 Euro that Crunchbase reports as their funding! Someone is working cheap!
To add to my above comment “[Hm, I missed the boat on this one unfortunately, but perhaps someone can help - I am willing to swap an invite to Evernote or Skydeck if anyone has a spare Soocial invite. Perhaps one of the naysayers above for whom it wasn’t what they expected would like to transfer their account? Hit me at dkr.smith at yahoo dot com if you are interested. Thanks!]“,
I realized I also have a few others.. joost, mint.com, xoopit and more that I can’t think of - if you have a Soocial invite, and you are in need of some other invite, drop me a line, I may have one!
Can I get an invite from somebody? thanks
wyctim at gmail dot com
Is it hard to develop such service? I suppose you just need to build a few things around a SyncML server like Funambol. ScheduleWorld.com had done so.
Great to see another entrant into the “deep end of the data portability pool”! For more context, here’s my post on the topic:
http://therealmccrea.com/2008/.....lity-pool/
And, Erick, I’d love a chance to meet and discuss the really cool stuff we’re working on.
boy.. the 300 are over so soon… Soocial is in demand and i want to be a part of it too…
in short, need an invitation: fangchu [at] gmail [dot] com
thanks and all the Best Daniel.
Outlook is not of use too me, but 2 way syncing has got me curious.
You forgot about fruux. It’s a small german team, their client works like charm and i heard they are in the process of integrating calendar sync as well.
Wow, they have a great landing page.
Love the hassle free and especially the “YOU CAN DELETE YOUR ACCOUNT!” message. No one ever lets you delete your account.
Can I get an invite too please ?
eliedu42 at yahoo dot fr
Congrats to Simon and Stefan. I met these guys back in 06 when Stefan did a great demo with an early stage version of Soocial at FOWA in London. Good people.
Need beta invite!!!
send me beta invite to soocial
Ill send you a beta invite to Twine. Fair deal!
Send to soocial@drop.io
The title of this article is simply not true and you know it. What exactly is lame about Plaxo and how is Soocial better? (btw: seems like a very nice and useful service.) Plaxo has been syncing address books and calendar with a much larger group of services for a few years now, as well as syncing contact info between members. Your animosity towards Plaxo seems misplaced and probably more about [spoken in Valley girl voice] acting all superior, than continuing to punish them for teaching Facebook and the rest of the SN companies how to grow a user base.
But, I guess you gotta earn a buck and thus rationalize that your petulant writing style, exaggerated titles, and artificially inflammatory stories that hurt the efforts of hard-working people is just part of your job.
Sheesh.