The rumors were accurate: Comcast will announce their acquisition of social contact list Plaxo today. Financial terms are not being disclosed, but the purchase price is between $150 and $170 million. Plaxo, which was founded in 2002, has raised just under $30 million in venture capital.
Plaxo has been the subject of considerable acquisition rumors lately, with both Google and Facebook named as potential suitors.
Plaxo says they will remain an independent organization in Silicon Valley. It will report into Comcast Interactive Media, which is a division of Comcast that develops and operates Internet businesses focused on entertainment, information and communication.
More from Plaxo’s CEO Ben Golub:
Plaxo and Comcast have been working together for the past year on a number of initiatives. Plaxo is providing the universal address book for Comcast’s SmartZone communications center (slated to launch later this year), and we are also now hosting all of the address book accounts for Comcast webmail users. Our partnership has already more than doubled the reach of the Plaxo network, bringing the total number of accounts to nearly 50 million.
Together, we intend to deliver on a vision of making “social media” a natural part of the lives of regular people, not just early-adopters. For example, you should be able to securely post family photos online in Pulse, and have them viewable by any of your family members, whether they are online, at work, on their mobile device, or in their living room watching TV. And you should be able to discover new shows to watch, based on what your friends and coworkers have recommended.
So, what about current Plaxo members? The services you know and enjoy from Plaxo will not only continue, but will continue to evolve and improve. In addition, both of our services benefit from “network effect,” which is to say that the more people who use them, the more useful they become.
On Monday I had an impromptu interview with Plaxo VP Marketing John McCrea and Chief Architect Joseph Smarr. They still had their poker faces on with regard to the acquisition:
This ends a long and sometimes troubled history for Plaxo, which was founded by Sean Parker, Minh Nguyen and two Stanford engineering students, Todd Masonis and Cameron Ring, in 2002. In 2006 the company finally abandoned it’s hated “viral” feature that tricked users into spamming their entire address book with Plaxo invitations.
More recently, however, Plaxo has been playing nice with the Internet. Last year they launched a popular service called Pulse, which pulls activity streams from other services into users’ Plaxo profiles. They were launch partners with Google Open Social, and announced support for DataPortability early this year. Even so, they still had the occasional misstep.
Update: The Gillmor Gang digests the news. Listen to the podcast here.
ok,
I couldn’t see that coming.
With the partnership came a new slogan for Comcast, “Do as much Evil as possible.”
Wait, Comcast paid HOW much for a little bit of tech and to learn that social media around watching television involves finding the best places to illegally download or stream shows?
Yeah, they viral method of attracting new users it’s still in use today, I guess…because I still get notifications from friends to get on board of Plaxo Pulse…maybe this would be an occasional misstep :)…
whoa whoa whoa ….what?
@Robert
Probably Comcast paid for their database of users not for the technology…and because they have used that “viral” method in the past and probably still using it Plaxo has now a big database.
could comcast have a worst brand? what other company is known for terrible products and customer service? plaxo has joined the axis of evil.
You’ll have to excuse me if I sound a bit skeptical of Plaxo’s ongoing commitment to current Plaxo users. I don’t doubt the Plaxo employees desire to continue serving both Comcast and non-Comcast customers, but someone in Comcast corporate will have the bright idea of making Plaxo’s service an “in-network” exclusive for their customers. At that time they’ll probably kill off Pulse and use the best parts of it (photo sharing, etc) to enhance their own Comcast-branded online offerings. The Plaxo name will also die at that time. It will all be victim of some Comcast executive who wants to do cost-cutting.
It’s a shame, and not because I don’t like Comcast. I have never been their customer primarily because they don’t offer service in my area of the country. I have no reason to like or dislike them as I have no experience with them.
And although I have been evangelizing Plaxo to all my friends and family, the new Pulse service just isn’t gaining enough traction. If it was, they wouldn’t have sold the company.
Deleting your Comcast Plaxo account has never been easier:
http://www.plaxo.com/delete_ac.....xhelp_1218
Probably too late data-wise, but at least it sends a message.
This is quite smart by Comcast imho - as @8 notes, it will be to integrate into a wider range of services. And considering the - ahem - optimistic - valuations of consumer socnets, thats probably not a bad $/user price as @6 notes.
@9 Thanks for the link, they say all data is removed.
Comcast has been dying to get into “social media”, now they have their own OpenSocial container. Let’s see what they can do. Their spamming still scares me.
Any chance Google could try and break up the deal and buy Plaxo? They have the cash.
Plaxo integration into Gmail would be awesome!
@12 I’ve been a Plaxo member since nearly day one and neither me nor my friends have ever been spammed. Yes, I heard it happened to some other people, but there was an option to prevent your friends from getting the e-mails.
Plaxo has shook off the spam mistakes by and large. You may get an e-mail if a friend wants you to connect with them on Plaxo, but there is an option on that e-mail to not receive any such invites in the future. Also many other social networks send e-mail invites as well. I got at least a half-dozen from Twitter and LinkedIn before I joined those sites.
This is brilliant. Nice job Comcast!!!!
This is a huge score for Comcast. Who knows what happens next with Plaxo….
Uuhh - yuk
…begins to install Plaxo off of computer…
meh
I’m not sure how to feel about this.
I love Plaxo, but I hate Comcast.
Decisions, decisions……
After spending about 5 minutes on the site I understood they won’t let me do anything untill I send mass-emails )) E-Mail invites are ok, but hey, let the new customer see the site first )
Hower the strategy worked out. 150M for a crappy site.
Comcast? What? Comcast interactive media? Their latest news was from August of LAST YEAR when they released some joke sw. Oh well, i guess it has been 6 years, so its time to cash in.
Agreed with the spam comments.
Plaxo is a spam company - their business model was sheer spam statistics. Blast spam email as many people as possible. Maybe some of them will sign up.
Plaxo is a spam company - their business model was sheer spam statistics. Blast spam email as many people as possible.
Expect to see spam in your comcast branded PVR. You’ve been watching soft core porn, do you need some viagra?
all I can say, soon there will be a very good alternative for online contact management (check out the link on my name)
Congrats to the Plaxo guys - well done.
Peter
Do you follow me @ http://twitter.com/peterurban
I love this. Seriously. Watching Plaxo grow and evolve over time, and watching the acquisition speculation on TC over the months/years has been interesting.
Kudos to the Plaxo team for a successful exit!
Jason Alba
CEO - JibberJobber
i really dont get that one.
Woot! That’s the first time a company I’ve named has been sold, and it won’t be the last. ^_^
Plaxo a company sync’ing with our times.. well deserving, despite its spamy past.
Congratulations!
Good for plaxo. They definitely overcame some firestorms and, for the most part, ended up on the right side of things. I think there is value in the service and the plaxo network. A friend I had coffee with last week even said he gets my blog and twitter updates exclusively through the service. I haven’t logged into plaxo in several weeks but its stoking and building my network. Nice.
Hopefully, Comcast won’t screw the whole thing up now that plaxo has finally gotten it right. There are some incredible opportunities for the service considering Comcast’s vast resources and reach. I’m looking forward to plaxo’s future.
Not deleting my plaxo account (yet).
Thank, Michael! I look at that video and realize I don’t have a very good poker face!
This headline should read - “Comcast continues to waste money which it intends to recoup by further overcharging for cable and internet service.” Plaxo is simply a spam engine and always has been. Comcast got snookered and will soon relegate Plaxo to the junk heap of other technologies gathering dust at Comcast, like thePlatform.
See
http://informitv.com/articles/.....eplatform/
Comcast would have a better product had it bought a entertaining blog at a fraction of the price.
See
http://www.alexa.com/data/deta.....ize=Medium
IAC avoided the spam trap when it passed on Flixster. Comcast was not as lucky. Bummer. Higher cable rates coming. . .