Getting caught up on e-mail, I notice that Plaxo Contacts 1.0 was launched on May 21st. This software looks like an interesting way to keep people up-to-date with changes in their contact information, but I suspect that it will be met with resistance for a couple of reasons:
- People will be reluctant to send their entire contact list to a company due to privacy concerns
- We don’t yet know what the business model is for Plaxo — how do they plan to make money?
- Is there a real problem that needs solving here? For those who care enough to keep their contacts up to date, wouldn’t a simple “my address has changed” e-mail suffice?
I’m intrigued by the concept, so I’m going to give it a try with a couple of friends. Clearly it wants to be “viral” by sending update messages to your entire contacts list, but that would be rude. Reading various weblogs, it looks like a lot of people are skeptical about the data being sent back to Plaxo. I’ll need to look more closely at that once it’s up and running.
Further reading: