Plaxo in the News

December 29, 2008

6 New Web Technologies of 2008 You Need to Use Now

Every year, we see scores of innovations trickle onto the web everything from new browser features to cool web apps to entire programming languages. Some of these concepts just make us smile, then we move on. Some completely blow our minds with their utility and ingenuity and become must-haves.

December 18, 2008

Cant We All Just Get Along?

MySpace, Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube, Digg--people are tired of entering the same information over and over again, every time they join a new social-networking site. Earlier this year, many social-site operators announced efforts to solve the problem by creating tools that make users‘ information portable. But as these products have started to roll out in the past few weeks, trying to keep up with them all has saddled websites with extra engineering.

December 16, 2008

Ways Job Seekers Can Find Old Contacts

When Rick Featherstone, 49, was laid off from DHL in August after nearly five years with the company, he dived into his Rolodex to call old network of colleagues and business associates. He figured it would be easy to reconnect. But it turned out that many of his former coworkers had moved on and finding them was a challenge. Mr. Featherstone, who had worked at just three companies over the previous 22 years, quickly realized his contact list was sorely out of date.

November 7, 2008

OpenID Q&A: Plaxos Joseph Smarr and John McCrea

After some recent considerable advances in the realm of OpenID, Webmonkey had the chance to chat with two of OpenIDs greatest evangelists and early adopters, Joseph Smarr and John McCrea. Smarr and McCrea are responsible for being among the first to implement OpenID on their online address book site, Plaxo. Together, they try to explain the momentum behind OpenID and how it might lead to even bigger things for the future of the web.

October 29, 2008

The Paperless Office Really

Of all the promises of information technology, none has proved more elusive than the paperless office. Although electronic communication has replaced much of the paper in my life, a lot of the most important informationfinancial and legal documents, expense report receipts, business cardsstubbornly remains on paper.

October 28, 2008

Easing Back to Work After Youve Retired

With the recent financial turmoil, many retirees are looking to re-enter the work force to make up for steep losses in their investment portfolios. Keep in mind that if you‘re under full retirement age and collecting Social Security, $1 will be deducted for every $2 you earn above the annual limit, which is $13,560 for 2008 and $14,160 for 2009; the limit is higher the year you reach full retirement age. However, once you stop working, you will likely see an increase in benefits to make up for the deductions. If you‘re going to work after you‘ve reached full retirement age, you won‘t be subject to earnings limits. Consider these six tips before heading back to work after retirement:

October 23, 2008

Netflix API Gets Love from Plaxo

When Netflix released its API, I said the coolest thing was that it gave developers access to a database of movies and actors. It also uses OAuth to let third parties create applications that build off of a users account.

October 6, 2008

Fruits of the Comcast-Plaxo Marriage: Fan Pages

If it wasn‘t immediately obvious why Comcast forked over a reported $150 million for Plaxo, a social networking site, it may become clearer later this month, when Plaxo officially launches Fan Pages for FanCast, Comcast‘s online video site.

September 29, 2008

One Key Fits All

Regular Internet users know how difficult it can be to manage all of the different user names and passwords required by the many Web sites they frequently visit. Wouldn‘t it be better if there were a simple and secure way to log on to all Web content?

September 26, 2008

Job Hunting Is, and Isnt, What It Used to Be

When I think back to my job-hunting days, my methods seem as quaint as comparing a Victrola to an iPod. First, there was no Internet. I perused trade journals for job possibilities. I painstakingly typed my resume on a typewriter (electric) and had to retype and retype and retype when I made a mistake. I cut and pasted my newspaper clips, which I needed to send along with the resume, onto letter-size paper, which was like trying to put together a jigsaw puzzle with a few pieces missing.

September 2, 2008

Finding a New Position as a Mature Job Hunter

Searching for a job when you‘re 50 or older requires a different approach than a typical search. You‘re likely to seek opportunities higher up on the corporate ladder and may face perceived age bias. To succeed, you need to plan ahead, asserts Lynne A. Sarikas, director of the M.B.A. career center at Northeastern University in Boston. Consider this advice to secure a new position:

July/August 2008

Who Owns Your Friends?

Technology blogger Robert Scoble wanted help moving contact information for his 5,000 Facebook friends into his Microsoft Outlook address book. He turned to Joseph Smarr, chief platform architect at Plaxo, a company in Mountain View, CA, that synchronizes contact information between Outlook, other desktop e-mail programs, and a number of Web services. Smarr gave Scoble a short program to test out, which automati cally paged through Scoble‘s Facebook connections and extracted the names, birthdays, and e-mail addresses of his friends.

May 14, 2008

Its Complaxtic: Comcast Buys Plaxo to Bolster Video Sharing

Plaxo is best known for its fancy address-book software that automatically updates everyone on your contact list whenever you make a change. So why is the cable giant Comcast buying the Silicon Valley start-up?

May 14, 2008

Comcast goes social with Plaxo acquisition

Comcast is adding a social dimension to its services through the acquisition of Plaxo, a deal the two companies announced Wednesday afternoon.

May 14, 2008

Comcast buys social network pioneer Plaxo

Comcast Corp (CMCSA.O) has agreed to acquire pioneering Web start-up Plaxo Inc, which was first to turn address books into social networks and laid the foundation for Friendster and Facebook.

May 13, 2008

Google to Connect Friends Across the Web

To socialize these days, hundreds of millions of people every month visit networking sites such as MySpace and Facebook. But what if the Web itself operated as a social network?

May 13, 2008

Google joins effort to make more Web sites more sociable

The effort to make it easier for Web surfers to connect with their friends is attracting a crowd. Following similar moves by the two biggest online hangouts, Internet search leader Google Inc. is introducing tools that are supposed to make any Web site more sociable. The service, expected to be available on a limited basis Monday evening, provides a framework that will enable people to interact with their friends and use favorite applications they have accumulated on social networks like Facebook and Plaxo even when they aren‘t visiting those sites.

May 5, 2008

Identity Crisis

It‘s the existential question of the Internet age: Who am I on this website? The Internet has come to dominate the way people keep in touch and share information. It has also fractured digital life - turning people into a piecemeal collection of user names, passwords, and online personas. Now, a growing number of efforts aim to fix the problem of online identity, so that photos shared on one website, social networks created on another, or restaurant reviews written at another are no longer fragmented.

March 20, 2008

Podcast: A Conversation with Plaxos John McCrea

John McCrea, the Veep at Plaxo in charge of marketing stopped by to do a live interview yesterday. The occasion that brought him by Mashable Conversations was the announcement of the results of the concepts of open and DataPortability when applied to a social network. The graphs he supplied us with prior to the interview and announcement were simply amazing.

February 29, 2008

Q&A: Throwing sheep at Plaxo's Joseph Smarr

MIAMI--Joseph Smarr, chief systems architect at Plaxo, has become somewhat of an icon of social media's future. An ardent supporter of open standards, Smarr is arguably one of the biggest proponents of Google's OpenSocial who can't officially claim to be a Googler. So it's fitting that Smarr has played a prominent role at the Future of Web Apps conference; CNET News.com had a chance to catch up with him on Thursday and find out some more about what "open" really means and what's next at Plaxo.

February 8, 2008

The Best Free Software

We did the math: If you bought popular apps instead of trying their gratis counter-parts, at the manufacturers' list prices you'd be out $5,183 and change! Why spend money when you can get what you need for nothing? Sometimes, you do get what you don't pay for.

February 2, 2008

Plaxo: Another week, another product

I don’t know what they feed the developers at Plaxo but they just keep on coming up with new products and services. We have written about Plaxo a lot here at The Next Web Blog and there are two reasons for that. We like their service and they produce a lot of news.

February 1, 2008

Google Social Graph API Spotted in the Wild: Plaxo Public Profiles

While most of the day has been devoted to coverage of the proposed Microsoft-Yahoo deal, there is some pretty significant news out of Google as well: the launch of the Social Graph API. As Mark described earlier, \"it’s used by social app developers to let their users grab information on their social connections across the internet.\"

February 1, 2008

Google unleashes Social Graph API - indexes people connections

Following on its OpenSocial APIs for building cross-social network applications, Google has created a Social Graph API that searches the Web for explicit public statements of connections between people. The Web crawler looks for XFN (XHTML Friends Network) and FOAF (Friend of a Friend), which are standard formats used to indicate people connections.

January 29, 2008

Plaxo Pulse Wants to Sync Your Status Updates

One thing about "Web 2.0" is that it doesn't take long for companies to copy features that are working well on other sites. A prominent example of this is the ubiquitous "Status Updates" feature, which first gained popularity on Facebook and has since been copied by MySpace, hi5, and is in a sense the main purpose of Twitter.

January 23, 2008

Plaxo Rides the Apple Wave With Pulse for iPhones

Plaxo Pulse recently made its application available on Windows Mobile OS, and now it’s also available as an optimized application for the iPhone. Both of these releases come within the same time frame as Plaxo Pulse’s integration with the Mac address book as well as Microsoft Outlook. It’s very clear, as it always has been, that Plaxo is looking to insert itself into every possible social application that a large number of people are likely to use.

January 22, 2008

Plaxo Pulse Optimized for 4 Million iPhones

Plaxo Pulse recently made its application available on Windows Mobile OS, and now it’s also available as an optimized application for the iPhone. Both of these releases come within the same time frame as Plaxo Pulse’s integration with the Mac address book as well as Microsoft Outlook. It’s very clear, as it always has been, that Plaxo is looking to insert itself into every possible social application that a large number of people are likely to use.

January 17, 2008

Yahoo Implements OpenID; Massive Win For The Project

The rumor last week was that Google (as well as Verisign and IBM) were mulling over the idea of joining the OpenID 2.0 single sign-on framework. But the real news comes today, as Yahoo and its roughly 250 million user IDs officially jump on the bandwagon. Today, there are only approximately 120 million valid OpenID accounts. In one move, Yahoo more than triples that number.

January 16, 2008

Plaxo Pulls The Social Network Into Mac Mail

At some point last year people started to realize that the email inbox was not only the “original” Internet social network, it’s also going to be the backbone of social networking going forward. You already have your friends (people in your address book), and the social graph is already filled (people you email, and who they email, etc.).

January 8, 2008

Facebook, Google And Plaxo Join Data Portability Workgroup

After publishing an invitation to Facebook to join the DataPortability Working Group January 4, we never thought that Facebook would accept it. Today changes everything you’ve ever thought about social-networking data and lock-in before, because today Facebook, Google and Plaxo have joined the DataPortability Workgroup.

January 3, 2008

Facebook, Robert Scoble and Free Love

If Facebook wanted more bad blog coverage it couldn’t have done a better job than picking on Robert Scoble, the publicity-seeking blogger. Mr. Scoble was kicked off of Facebook because he used a preview version of a Plaxo service that logged onto his Facebook account to download the names and e-mail addresses of his friends.

January 3, 2008

Plaxo gives Facebook a litmus test

Plaxo links Pulse social network to Outlook e-mail client, taking social networking to the desktop

December 11, 2007

Microsoft Outlook gets a 'Pulse'

Plaxo links Pulse social network to Outlook e-mail client, taking social networking to the desktop

December 11, 2007

Spice up Outlook: New Plaxo Toolbar puts the Social Web in Your E-Mail

Plaxo has announced a new version of its toolbar for Outlook which now integrates your Plaxo Pulse feed, allowing you to see what your friends are up to before you try to contact them.

December 11, 2007

Plaxo Pulse Toolbar for Outlook = Real-Time Updates on Your Contacts

Plaxo is pushing its newest social networking tool, Pulse, even further into our existing applications with a new Outlook toolbar. Yes, Plaxo already had Outlook integration, which gave you updated contact information on the folks in your address book, and more recently offered up map and direction options and click-to-connect VoIP options.

December 11, 2007

Plaxo Offers Pulse Plugin For Outlook

Plaxo has announced a new plugin that brings Plaxo Pulse to Microsoft Outlook.

November 20, 2007

First OpenSocial Application Generates Traffic Surge

Plaxo Inc., the first company to launch applications built using Google Inc.'s OpenSocial APIs, has seen a surge in traffic in the three weeks since the APIs were released. Google unveiled the APIs on Nov. 1 as part of an effort to help developers build social applications that can run on multiple sites.

November 19, 2007

OpenSocial Has Been Good to Plaxo, Inc.

Ever since Plaxo joined Google’s OpenSocial platform a couple weeks ago, the number of connections on Plaxo has skyrocketed from about 200,000 to over a million. Here is a graph from Plaxo marketing VP John McCrea (nice hockey stick, John)

November 19, 2007

Plaxo Sees Exponential Growth as First to Use OpenSocial

The company that got first dibs at implementing OpenSocial gadgets has seen its service grow more than tenfold in the 3 weeks since roll out. Plaxo Pulse, the service that lets you receive live updates on activity going on across your social networks based on the contacts you have in Plaxo, was quick to jump on the OpenSocial train; and that has turned into a gravy train since then.

November 1, 2007

Let's Be Friends

Google understands the power of numbers. And that means it wants more friends...

October 30, 2007

Personal Data Changes Name of Game

The web is being reinvented, and this time it is people — or, more precisely, the personal information and social connections they enter into social networks — who are at the centre...

October 31, 2007

John McCrea of Plaxo Talks about Google’s OpenSocial Platform

Google wants in on the social networking game and, as we mentioned this morning, the company plans to unveil a new set of APIs designed to give developers a cross-network platform — think the Facebook platform without the Facebook lock-in...

October 31, 2007

Will Google "Friendster" Facebook?

Anyone remember Friendster? It was an early entrant into the social networking scene. If they had done their work right they SHOULD have been a much bigger player than they are now. Why aren’t they?...

October 30, 2007

Google-led Gang to Take on Facebook — Google’s OpenSocial to Launch

A host of Silicon Valley companies led by Google are ganging together to take on Facebook — the social networking company that is the toast of the town right now. A group of Facebook’s cross-town rival, including Google, LinkedIn, Hi5, Friendster, Plaxo and Ning, are apparently responding, in an effort to see if they can stop Facebook from running away with the lead in social networking...

October 30, 2007

Google and Friends to Gang Up on Facebook

Google and some of the Web’s leading social networks are teaming up to take on the new kid on the block — Facebook. On Thursday, an alliance of companies led by Google plans to begin introducing a common set of standards to allow software developers to write programs for Google’s social network, Orkut, as well as others, including LinkedIn, hi5, Friendster, Plaxo and Ning...

October 30, 2007

Details Revealed — Google OpenSocial to Launch Thursday

Details emerged today on Google’s broad social networking ambitions, first reported here in late September, with a follow up earlier this week. The new project, called OpenSocial (URL will go live on Thursday), goes well beyond what we’ve previously reported...

October 23, 2007

Plaxo Widget Brings Lifestreaming to the Masses

Plaxo's Pulse social network aggregator is now offering an embeddable widget for those of you looking to jump on the "lifestream" bandwagon. Pulse, which is a social network in its own right, makes it easy to pull in data from a variety of sources — Flickr, Twitter, your blog and pretty much anything with an RSS feed — and view it all in one place...

October 22, 2007

Plaxo Launches Pulse Widget

Pulse, which launched earlier this summer, is Plaxo’s foray into social networking. After years of collecting users’ contact information and address book contacts, they took the next step and created a social network around all that data...

October 17, 2007

Web 2.0 expert says Cisco should buy Plaxo

Cisco should buy Plaxo as another layer to its unified communications strategy, reckons Web and social media commentator LaSandra Brill, writing in her Marketing in a Web 2.0 World blog...

October 9, 2007

Forget Facebook. Think Plaxo

Today’s center of attention is upon Google’s acquisition of Jaiku and what it means for every man and his dog. In the meantime people forget about Plaxo...

September 24, 2007

Plaxo Launch New "Social" Groups

Plaxo last night quietly launched a new feature called Pulse Groups. Pulse now lets you create as many groups as you want. When you create a group, you declare it to be private, moderated, or public...

September 21, 2007

Analysis: Social Networks May Become Interoperable

For now, Plaxo's Pulse might be an indication of where social networks are headed: user control. Plaxo puts the user at the center, basing the network on...

September 21, 2007

Though MySpace, Facebook Dominate, Others Seek Social Networking...

A recent example of a company jumping on social networking is 6-year-old Plaxo, an online address book service with more than 15 million members...

September 20, 2007

Effort seeks to implement social Web 'bill of rights'

’This is PR 2.0, which is to say it is very much about the conversation and the medium being intertwined,’ said John McCrea, VP of marketing at Plaxo...

August 29, 2007

Plaxo Nudges The Open Social Network With New Developer Tools

Earlier today Plaxo announced a new open source tool for those looking to begin...

August 29, 2007

Plaxo aims to consolidate online identities

Plaxo, best known for its address book synch services, is targeting a major problem on the social Web with new software that allows users...

August 28, 2007

Plaxo gets naked, opens up some source code

Contact management site Plaxo, which has begun dabbling in social networking with its new-ish Pulse...

August 28, 2007

Plaxo news: microformats based online identity consolidator

Plaxo, sometime in the next few hours will ship an online identity consolidator (that’s what they call it) based on microformats. What does that do? Lets you keep track of your identity from a group of online social networks...

August 9, 2007

Don't leave home without Plaxo

Have you heard of Plaxo? There's been a lot of buzz about it this week because the company unveiled new features Monday. ...

August 9, 2007

How To Network Like A Pro Online

One of these, Plaxo, now with some 15 million users, recognizes any changes to the contact information of any Plaxo member and automatically updates that ...

August 6, 2007

More thoughts on open social networks

Given the opportunity to leverage the social graph and collective intelligence in a corporate context, Facebook, LinkedIn, Plaxo or another company will ...

August 6, 2007

Plaxo Announces Socially-Networked 'Pulse'

On Monday, Plaxo announced its new Pulse service, which adds Facebook-style social networking features to its 5-year old contact ...

August 6, 2007

Facebook, social capitalists and open networks

Plaxo recently launched its Pulse service that is more permeable. Your friends network can be walled off.

August 6, 2007

Plaxo Launches Social Network Pulse

Plaxo launched today its social network, Pulse. Pulse pulls in what they call "people feed" or RSS (Really Simple Syndication) to allow for conversation ...

August 6, 2007

Plaxo Aims to Turn Address Book Into Social Network

Plaxo today announced plans for its Pulse service to allow users to receive feeds of content created at sites like YouTube and MySpace by their friends and ...

August 6, 2007

Plaxo launches new social network, Pulse--and it's a lot like Pownce

As expected, address and calendar organizer Plaxo unveiled on Monday its new Pulse social networking site. Rumors about Plaxo expanding into social ...

August 5, 2007

Slap in the Facebook: It's Time for Social Networks to Open Up

On Monday, the contact management service Plaxo will launch a new social network called Pulse. Offering a customizable profile page, the service will allow ...

August 3, 2007

Plaxo and the Stone Age of the social Web

Plaxo’s forthcoming entry into mainstream social networking with its Pulse service is all over TechMeme this morning. What was formerly a way to synch your ...

August 3, 2007

Report: Plaxo to unveil social network on Monday

Launched by contact and schedule management service Plaxo, this will apparently be a sort of midpoint between the strictly-business LinkedIn and the ...

August 3, 2007

Plaxo's to unveil social network on Monday

Plaxo is launching a new social network, dubbed "Pulse," and it should offer a number of interesting features; indeed, a couple of them will address flaws...

August 2, 2007

An Open/Controllable Social Network?

One of the guys was John McCrea, vice president of marketing for Plaxo. He told me that on Monday Plaxo is going to turn on a new version...

July 20, 2007

Has Plaxo created a new FaceBook? Report from MashUp Camp

At MashUp Camp 4 at the Computer History Museum, Plaxo showed its Pulse application, which looks very much like FaceBook, with similar features. Are we heading into a mashup world where everything shares addresses, photos, movies, etc? Does FaceBook hold pole position?

July 19, 2007

Plaxo enhances support for open standards

Social networking company Plaxo has enhanced its support for emerging open standard technologies for online identities and personal information management.

July 19, 2007

Plaxo With Sauce: PIM Site Now Supporting OpenID And Microformats

Plaxo is the latest high profile web service to announce support for OpenID, the standard for online identity management.

July 18, 2007

Plaxo Could Be the Open Facebook

Plaxo recently launched a new 3.0 version that was more than just an AJAX face lift.

June 25, 2007

Plaxo Reinvents Itself As 'Switzerland Of Personal Information'

Plaxo released a beta version of its service, which unifies address books and calendars from disparate providers and also allows members to share streams of information with one another.

June 25, 2007

Tech File: New Plaxo puts extra power in data syncing

Plaxo has a somewhat controversial past, but based on my experience with its 3.0 version launched today, it deserves a terrific future.

June 25, 2007

Plaxo reboots, gets in sync

A few years ago, Philippe Kahn, who headed up Borland and started a couple of other companies including LightSurf and Starfish Software said, “Synchronization between various devices needs to happen quite automatically, without complication and has to be transparent.” With the new Plaxo 3.0, Kahn’s wishes are almost coming true.

June 25, 2007

New Version Of Plaxo Launched: More Sync More Often

Plaxo has announced Plaxo 3.0, a new version that builds on its multi-point sync product by offering improved sync options as well as a feed-style people tracker.

June 25, 2007

Plaxo 3.0 Launches - "The Ultimate Mashup"

Plaxo, the online contact manager, has launched its Plaxo 3.0 release today, bringing in a lot more sync and sharing functionality.

June 25, 2007

Plaxo: "All your social network are belong to us" (and mamma mia!)

Morning. Mumble. Monday's IT Blogwatch: in which Plaxo launches its new 3.0 service. Not to mention Queen in a Windows MessageBox...

June 25, 2007

Hands on with the new Plaxo

Plaxo has finally lifted the veil on Plaxo 3, opening their new interface and strategy to the world for public beta testing.

June 25, 2007

Plaxo: One PIM App To Rule Them All. Maybe.

Plaxo has launched a brand new version of its popular online contact manager app as well as new and improved desktop clients. Plaxo 3.0, as the company calls the updates, boasts a number of synchronization improvements and aims to be your one-stop address book and contact manager.

June 25, 2007

Plaxo looks to social networking market

Online address book provider Plaxo has introduced a major overhaul in an effort to catch up with networking sites such as LinkedIn and Facebook.

June 25, 2007

Plaxo turns address books into Web social networks

Plaxo, which makes software for PC users to keep address books up-to-date, said on Sunday it is helping millions of members open up their online datebooks to build social networks like MySpace or Facebook.

June 25, 2007

Plaxo Is Staying in Touch

Online address-book company Plaxo Inc., which stumbled in the last few years amid privacy concerns, is launching an overhauled service to reinvent itself and compete better with Internet networking companies such as Facebook Inc. and LinkedIn Corp.

June 25, 2007

Plaxo 3.0 gets social with multi-way synch

Plaxo has eliminated the annoying spam-like email feature from its synchronization service, and this week introduced the beta of version 3.0, which now offers multi-way sync of contacts and calendar between various services from Microsoft, Google, Yahoo!, AOL, Mac, Thunderbird, and mobile phones.

June 25, 2007

Plaxo introduces new address book with better sync

The company offers to synchronize multiple online address books and services from companies and organizations like AOL, Apple, Microsoft, Mozilla, Google, and Yahoo.

June 18, 2007

Rivals look to rein in LinkedIn

Golub said that it's better for Plaxo to act as the Switzerland of the business social networking world and not get involved in head-to-head battles.

May 7, 2007

Comcast to integrate e-mail and voicemail online

...Comcast created SmartZone in partnership with Hewlett-Packard Co., Zimbra, a specialist in messaging software and Plaxo, an online address book service.

May 7, 2007

Comcast Readies All-in-One SmartZone Portal

...Comcast isn't pulling off SmartZone alone, though... The alliance with Plaxo will let customers merge their contacts into a single address book that will synchronize with and be accessible from a wide range of tools, services, and Web-enabled devices.

April 15, 2007

10 Web 2.0 Apps You Can't Live Without

...Plaxo.com has matured to the point where it has set the standard that every other contact manager developer would like to attain

March 20, 2007

The widgetization of the Web

While the dot-com era focused squarely on aggregating data on the Internet, one of the most defining characteristics of Web 2.0 is the deconstruction of the Web into small, single-purpose applications called widgets or gadgets.

February 2, 2007

A Level Playing Field Online for Super Bowl Ads

...according to John McCrea, VP of marketing for Plaxo. Our head of customer support has a good eye for cinematography and editing," he said. "The streaking is a special talent we found in our product management team."

February 1, 2007

Super Bowl Marketers Plan End Run

In a savvy move, a group of internet startups have turned their backs on the Super Bowl completely and created their own miniature advertising extravaganza on the web...

November 2006

The Baby Billionaires of Silicon Valley

The Internet's new boom kids are poised to take over the world — if they don't crash first

October 31, 2006

Verizon to offer automatic phone contact updates

The service takes computer-based contact lists from commonly used e-mail systems, such as those of Microsoft or Yahoo, and sends the contact details wirelessly to the customer's cellphone

October 31, 2006

Verizon Wireless launches Plaxo-powered contact update service

October 31, 2006

Verizon makes phone contact updates automatic

The service is designed to give subscribers access to a self-updating address book on their mobile phones, which will synchronize their contact information with other communication tools, such as Microsoft Outlook, Outlook Express, AIM, Yahoo! Mail, the Mac OS X Address Book and Thunderbird.

October 31, 2006

Verizon Offers Wireless Synching of Phone/PC Contact Lists

The Plaxo service is meant to eliminate the hassle and time spent punching in contact information, such as names, telephone numbers and addresses, into mobile phones.

October 31, 2006

Verizon to Offer OTA Contact Sync

A service from Plaxo that allows its wireless customers to automagically sync up their contacts between their computers and mobile devices, over the air

October 15, 2006

Gags-to-riches tale of the Welsh wizard who bet on YouTube

That will not stop people poring over the list of Sequoia's investments — future hopes include… Plaxo, which automatically updates web-based contact lists — in the hope of spotting the next Google or YouTube

October 3, 2006

Plaxo tops 15 million users

Forget Facebook and social networking. For a real example of networking, check out www.plaxo.com, the place where you enter your contact list and keep current on what everyone is doing and where they're located.

September 29, 2006

Plaxo tries internal Unconference

Meataxo founder Joseph Smarr, a Plaxo senior software engineer, says it’s a good way to save the rest of the week for uninterrupted blocks of work, and to get a glimpse into what everyone else is doing. He thinks it helps Plaxo feel like it’s still a small startup.

September 26, 2006

Jajah’s Mobile ambitions

The company is in discussions to embed its calling technology into social-networking sites and portals. The first batch of announcements will come in October, Scharf says. These sites—online address book provider Plaxo is the only one announced one so far—will have a major monetary incentive to partner with Jajah: The startup has 30% margins, and can offer participating sites some $10 to $20 per user per year in revenue sharing, he says.

August 22, 2006

Argentinians have full address books

According to the survey of anonymous, aggregated data from more than 10 million Plaxo members worldwide, Argentina led Plaxo's Connected Index with an average of 479 contacts per address book.

August 7, 2006

AOL Drives Plaxo Growth

Plaxo, an online address book that allows users to keep their contacts up-to-date, has been growing rapidly since it signed a partnership with AOL last July. The Web-based service provider hit the 10 million member mark in March and has been adding an additional 1 million members per month since.

July 4, 2006

Plaxo’s Netvibes Widget

June 30, 2006

Plaxo’s newest employees

Five fratenity brothers created the online calendar HipCal in their fratenity house at RPI. The unique calendaring service caught the eye of Plaxo, who acquired the company in May 2006 and offered all five co-founders new jobs at Plaxo. Meet the five founders in this video of their coast-to-coast road trip.

June 21, 2006

Supernova: Navigating the personal infosphere

Plaxo tries the solve one aspect of the overload problem by creating a smart address book and providing data synching across all devices. If information changes in a person’s network, and that person also uses Plaxo, the address book is dynamically updated.

June 21, 2006

Video: Plaxo has your number

May 24, 2006

Plaxo integrates low-cost VoIP service from Jajah

Called Plaxo Click to Call and available now, the new feature will let users click on any phone number stored in their Plaxo online address book to initiate a phone call, according to company officials.

May 23, 2006

Plaxo gets hip to VoIP

The move marks Plaxo's first foray into allowing its customers to actually communicate by phone with the people they have listed in the contact management service Plaxo provides. A partnership Plaxo has with AOL lets AIM users initiate chats through the Plaxo address book.

May 2, 2006

Plaxo to acquire online calendaring company

Plaxo, the online address book company, announced Monday plans to acquire HipCal with the intent of strengthening its online calendaring options.

May 1, 2006

Plaxo Buys HipCal

May 1, 2006

Plaxo acquires calendar startup HipCal

Plaxo says they will integrate HipCal’s calendaring product directly into Plaxoâ’ free product, and expand premium calendar services as well. Plaxo, now with 11 million or so members and adding 20,000 per day, is in an excellent position to leverage its address book features into new product lines. Calendaring is an obvious next step.

May 1, 2006

How to Get a Job out of School: Start a Company

May 1, 2006

To Whom It May Concern: Here’s My Calendar

John McCrea, vice president of marketing at Mountain View, Calif.-based Plaxo, said the company's approach about a centralized address book puts it in a position to become as important in personal communications as Google and Yahoo have become in search. "Other companies out there think of the address book in the context of their other services, whereas we see the address book in the context of all the services in your life," he told internetnews.com.

May 1, 2006

Frat brothers sell company; leave Tech Valley for Silicon Valley

May 1, 2006

End fo the Cold Call?

Other tools don't bring you new contacts but help you manage the ones you have more effectively. Plaxo Inc., of Mountain View, Calif., lets its members store their contacts in an online database. Then, whenever members update a contact's information, the update is sent to all the other Plaxo members who share that contact. So, for instance, if one member notes that a contact has changed jobs, the other members who have that contact on their list receive word of the change.

February 2, 2006

Plaxo Opens its API

Developers of all stripes can now leverage the infrastructure of Plaxo to add synchronized address book contacts to their sites and applications.

January 6, 2006

Ben Golub, President and CEO, Plaxo

In a world of multiple e-mail addresses, phone numbers and changing locations, staying in touch isn't always an easy task.

December 7, 2005

Plaxo Prepares for Growth

Thanks to a recent agreement with AOL to bring Plaxo's Web-based contact management services to the interactive service provider's 27 million worldwide customers, Plaxo could potentially see its user base grow by five-fold.

November 7, 2005

Plaxo Rides Online Network Wave

As people use the Internet more and more to connect with each other, the founders expect a product like Plaxo to find a home in communication tools like email as well as e-commerce applications.

July 27, 2005

Plaxo extends support to Mozilla e-mail client

Plaxo Toolbar for Thunderbird will allow Thunderbird users to update their e-mail contacts and calendars automatically using Plaxo's software.

July 11, 2005

AOL brings its address book to life

These [Plaxo] enhancements give AOL a slight lead in the battle among portals and operators…

July 7, 2005

AOL to enhance e-mail services with Plaxo technology

Integrating AIM”s presence with Plaxo's directory is very compelling

July 7, 2005

AOL deal gives Plaxo a fighting chance

If you haven't tried Plaxo, I'd encourage you to check it out…

July 6, 2005

AOL to help users update contacts

Plaxo has won an avid following among a technically adept crowd…

July 6, 2005

Tech Ticker

July 6, 2005

AOL to synchronize PIMs with Plaxo tools

July 6, 2005

Big breakthrough for Plaxo…finally

July 6, 2005

AOL teams with Plaxo for address book

July 6, 2005

Plaxo taps into AOL membership base

July 6, 2005

AOL's new buddy system

…it's clear that AOL is proactively working to keep itself relevant on the ever-changing Internet. Its new Plaxo-enhanced features might just help it leverage its strengths and woo more traffic and loyalty to its services.

July 6, 2005

Plaxo wins over AOL

Analysts say the address book is becoming increasingly important in the communications battleground.

July 6, 2005

AOL teams with Plaxo for contact management

July 6, 2005

AOL will integrate Plaxo™ Services

July 6, 2005

AOL to offer integrated data management

With all the new and free services America Online is offering lately a little help on organizing that information wouldn't hurt. Enter Plaxo…

July 6, 2005

AOL, Plaxo forge contact management deal

July 6, 2005

AOL to help users update contacts

June 21, 2005

Ties that bind

If you value your relationships, remember that the true strength of most relationships is determined by the content of the relationship and the effort invested by both parties…

June 13, 2005

Writing the codes on blogs. Companies figure out what's OK, what's not in online realm

Given what he [Mark Jen] went through, the Plaxo rules are striking: They make it OK to blog on company time and to criticize the corporate bosses.

June 9, 2005

Stay in touch

June 9, 2005

Can I borrow a pen?

June 7, 2005

Around Town — Computing. Plaxo 2.0

June 5, 2005

Corporations entering world of blogs

May 2, 2005

Blogs will change your business

A month later, Jen landed a job at Plaxo… A key part of his job, says a company spokesperson, is to help coordinate Plaxo's blogging efforts…

April 18, 2005

When the blogger blogs, can the employer intervene?

April 12, 2005

Plaxo: It's a business tool for more than address books.

Not only does Plaxo help ensure address books are up to date but Plaxo serves as a great client 'tickler.'

March 31, 2005

Plaxo goes mobile

It's [Plaxo Mobile Access] an easy alternative to having names and numbers available when you switch cell phones.

March 22, 2005

Plaxo pushes for-pay services

Through this service [Plaxo Mobile Access], any mobile phone can access Plaxo information, like the address book and calendar, from any WAP-enabled device.

March 22, 2005

Plaxo contact service adds paid features

Two years after launching its free online address book service, Plaxo Inc. on Tuesday plans to introduce paid offerings for mobile access and for cleaning up duplicate entries in address books.

March 22, 2005

Making Plaxo a paying proposition

…Plaxo's user base has grown steadily, to 5.5 million today, and devotees love how it has simplified staying in touch.

March 1, 2005

Telecommuter Tools: Computer Cleanup

Plaxo is literally a dream come true…

January 25, 2005

Uma agenda atualizada a toda prova e o que promete o Plaxo

January 23, 2005

Sort 'em out with Plaxo, the sheep from the goats

Its [Plaxo's] founders were in search of the holy-grail killer app regarding personal contacts. In many folks' opinion, they have located the grail.

December 25, 2004

On computers…

December 20, 2004

Plaxo holiday cards mentioned in DEMOLetter

December 13, 2004

Plaxo mentioned in Kool Wordz

November 30, 2004

Networks: Online social networks

November 22, 2004

Plaxo keeping contacts in sync

November 21, 2004

Building a start-up: Plaxo

October 19, 2004

Young entrepreneurs raise $20 million for web venture

September 9, 2004

Plaxo reconsidered: David Coursey recommends Plaxo

August 10, 2004

Sequoia Capital's Moritz on how to be the next Google

August 9, 2004

On-campus entrepreneurs change definition of homework

August 9, 2004

Address book apps try to shake the spam label

August 4, 2004

Next Wave: How to build buzz on the blogs

July 21, 2004

Keep contact info in sync

June 16, 2004

Making software fun again

June 15, 2004

Could Plaxo follow the Yahoo, Google fairytale script?

June 15, 2004

First Yahoo, then Google, now...

June 14, 2004

Plaxo's start-up story sounds familiar

June 7, 2004

Next Wave: Good idea, strong growth, great VCs - no guarantees

May 31, 2004

An eye for the mass market

May 24, 2004

Go east, Nokia

May 24, 2004

Start-up Plaxo sketches out business plan

May 24, 2004

Plaxo gets jump-start with Yahoo search

May 24, 2004

Plaxo updates its contacts with Cisco

May 24, 2004

Plaxo connects to more funding

May 24, 2004

Plaxo, Yahoo make deal on search

May 23, 2004

Start-up Plaxo sketches out business plan

May 15, 2004

Contact-ual search

May 13, 2004

Plaxo Contacts to feature Yahoo! Search

May 11, 2004

Plaxo named to the Red Herring Top 100

April 30, 2004

Founder Todd Masonis on CNBC SquawkBox

April 12, 2004

The Plaxo process

April 5, 2004

Updating addresses? A software shortcut

April 5, 2004

Helping people on the move keep addresses up-to-date

March 22, 2004

Productivity Software: Using the right software can help you save time

March 21, 2004

New Plaxo software help maintain e-mail address books

March 4, 2004

Plaxo hits the Wall Street Journal

February 20, 2004

The perils and promise of online schmoozing

February 16, 2004

Plaxo helps you keep up with pals

December 14, 2003

Recommended software: Plaxo Contacts

November, 2003

Staying current With contacts

November 10, 2003

Do it yourself: The auto-address book

October 3, 2003

Hot companies to watch: Plaxo

September 30, 2003

How to make friends…and index people

September 1, 2003

Plaxo notes contact changes

August 7, 2003

Contact unmanagement

August 4, 2003

Banking on its customer base, Plaxo raises $8.5 million more

March 19, 2003

Contact managers made easy

March 6, 2003

Napster's veterans change tracks

November 12, 2002

Napster co-founder unveils Plaxo

November 12, 2002

Napster co-founder's new venture

November 12, 2002

P2P pioneers take on new challenges