Category Archives: Recent News

Now, Plaxo, creator of a universal address book, digs a little deeper into our smartphone behavior in its recently released Mobile & Online Backup Trends Study, centering on how smartphone users in the US utilize online backup tools and interact

Butterfingers in the bathroom is a common way that people damage or break their

People have to stop bringing phones into the bathroom, because a recent survey says that’s the No.1 way precious contact lists are lost. One in three who responded to the Mobile & Online Backup Trends Study by online address book

Does the world have a problem with coordination? Is the increased level of drug ingestion causing people to lose their grip on the things that are most precious to them? This certainly seems to be the case when one reads

It happened to a good friend of mine. And it could happen to you. You’re at work, minding your own business (or, more appropriately, doing your business), when all of a sudden that snazzy touch screen device you’re holding slips

Plaxo Inc., the company behind the automatically syncing address book service, released a report today about how people deal with contact information, based on a study of U.S. smartphone users. Its Mobile & Online Backup Trends Study found that 66

<h3 Today’s smartphones are much more than just a phone, but even with seamless Internet access and as extendible as they are through apps, at their core they remain a social tool. A recent study by address book solutions provider

Plaxo, the company behind Plaxo.com – the world’s leading online address book has recently released the results of a study it performed, which brought to light some interesting findings. According to its study, 55% of people cited that the biggest

Now, Plaxo, creator of a universal address book, digs a little deeper into our smartphone behavior in its recently released Mobile & Online Backup Trends Study, centering on how smartphone users in the US utilize online backup tools and interact

Plaxo has decided to call time on its social networking ambitions, and will instead focus on providing address book services starting with the launch of a new service. from ITProPortal | March 17, 2011

Plaxo, creators of the ever popular address book, recently announced that it is phasing out its social network features as the company shifts the focus back to managing users address books and subsequently see Plaxo return to its grass roots.

The company today announced Plaxo Personal Assistant, a service that intelligently keeps your address book or contact list up to date with the most relevant information. The service is available for iPhone and iPad via an app on the iTunes

Plaxo, the once famous company for its address book service, is restarting operations to once again focus on solving the increasing problem of how to keep contact information updated and relevant. from IntoMobile | March 17, 2011

Frank Gillet, vice president and principal analyst: One type of information ripe for help from personal cloud services is contacts or address books. from Forrester Blog | March 16, 2011

Plaxo is returning to its roots. This includes a segue out of social networking and a refocus on the address book and unveiling Plaxo Personal Assistant, a completely new service that intelligently makes automatic updates to your address book, so

Plaxo’s new Personal Assistant address book product stores a user’s contact list in the cloud and scours the Web to make sure they are up-to-date. from Silicon Valley Business Journal | March 16, 2011

The company is launching a paid “Personal Assistant” tool that scours public Web information (including social networks) for contact information updates and keeps address books updated. from All Things Digital | March 16, 2011

Personal Assistant returns to the out-of-date contacts problem that Plaxo tried to solve earlier. Instead of expecting everyone to create a Plaxo account and keep it up-to-date, the Personal Assistant checks public data sources and notifies users when a connection’s

Today, Plaxo unveils what it has spent the last year building: a new family of address book-related services and what it hopes will be its golden goose, the Plaxo Personal Assistant, a service that intelligently makes automatic updates to your

After getting its hands dirty in social networking, Plaxo now plans to give a boost to its original vision by adding new features to its contacts management service. from Fastgush | March 16, 2011

The company announced new services such as Plaxo Personal Assistant, which automatically maintains user address books and tracks updates across the web. from Silicon Valley Watcher | March 16, 2011

The big news is the introduction of Plaxo Personal Assistant, which will automatically update your contact information using social networking sites, Zoom Info, and other online sites. from Blogcritics | March 16, 2011

Plaxo announced Plaxo Personal Assistant, a service that makes intelligent updates to your address book to make sure that it’s always up to date. from PCMag | March 16, 2011

The company has announced that it’s refocusing on its address book product, and has released the Plaxo Personal Assistant, a new service that intelligently makes automatic updates to the Plaxo address book to keep contact information relevant and current. from GigaOM

Plaxo is going back to its roots as a contact updating and synchronization service, which is still a needed function. If you’ve got different and conflicting address books on the Web, your e-mail app, and your phone, then you know

Plaxo says it’s getting out of the social networking game and back to its roots of keeping contact info up to date. And to mark the transition, the Web-based address book service is expanding its offerings to include a new

Plaxo says it’s getting out of the social networking game and back to its roots of keeping contact info up to date. And to mark the transition, the Web-based address book service is expanding its offerings to include a new

After 9 years Plaxo is returning to its core focus, helping users manage multiple address books. The company will unveil new services next week. from ZDNet | March 8, 2011

Search giant joins Facebook and Plaxo in rolling out new technology aimed at decreasing password rage among users. from Internet News | November 3, 2009

Want to simplify the process of creating online accounts? Google on Tuesday announced that it has finalized a two-step log-in process that lets you use your Google information to set up accounts on other Web sites. from PC Magazine | November

Yahoo! has combined OpenID instant log-ins with OAuth data swapping. In other words, after logging in to a third party web site with your Yahoo! account, you can now swap profile data, contacts, and other info between the two. from The

MySpace, Plaxo and now Google all support a new open standard for sharing social data across web services. Called Portable Contacts, it lets third parties securely access data like your address book in Gmail or your friends list for use

After a period of dramatic tension, social networking giant Facebook has joined forces with the OpenID community working for a distributed system of standards-based, non-proprietary user identity. It’s a move we think bodes well for the web and yesterday the

The most-watched geek event of the day has to be the OpenID UX (User Experience) Summit, hosted at the Facebook headquarters. The most discussed moment of the day will surely be the presentation by Comcast’s Plaxo team. from ReadWriteWeb | February

Remember all that talk about how normal, everyday users find OpenID too confusing and difficult to use? And how the login system’s nagging usability issues will prevent it from being adopted by the mainstream web audience? from Wired | February 10,

Today, Google and Plaxo released a hybrid protocol that combines OpenID, the open online identity standard, with OAuth, the secure data portability standard. from TechCrunch | January 29, 2009

As a concept, OpenID has shown a great deal of potential. But that potential has often been hamstrung by the series of hurdles through which OpenID users have been required to jump in order to use their credentials. from ReadWriteWeb |

10 tips to building, maintaining, and using your professional network in a job search. from The Boston Globe | January 12, 2009

Here at ReadWriteWeb, we’re big proponents of the Open Stack. As such, we’ve been encouraging you to participate in the OpenID Foundation Board elections, throughout December. Hopefully, you got the chance to participate, because the elections have come to a

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

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

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. from Wired |

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

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

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. from Reuters | May 14, 2008

Comcast is adding a social dimension to its services through the acquisition of Plaxo, a deal the two companies announced Wednesday afternoon. from CNet | May 14, 2008

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

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

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

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

Tens of millions of people have been busy the last few years building Facebook’s most valuable asset – their social graph. As people add friends, and those people add friends, Facebook gets to understand exactly how its users know each

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

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

Plaxo links Pulse social network to Outlook e-mail client, taking social networking to the desktop from ZDNet | January 3, 2008

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

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

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

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)

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?… from Scobleizer | October 31, 2007

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…

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

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,

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…

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… from ZDNet | October 9, 2007

Plaxo, best known for its address book synch services, is targeting a major problem on the social Web with new software that allows users… from Telephony Online | August 29, 2007

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 … from Forbes | August 9, 2007

Have you heard of Plaxo? There’s been a lot of buzz about it this week because the company unveiled new features Monday. … from ComputerWorld | August 9, 2007

Social networking company Plaxo has enhanced its support for emerging open standard technologies for online identities and personal information management. from Macworld | July 19, 2007

Plaxo recently launched a new 3.0 version that was more than just an AJAX face lift. from Tech Crunch | July 18, 2007

The company offers to synchronize multiple online address books and services from companies and organizations like AOL, Apple, Microsoft, Mozilla, Google, and Yahoo. from Information Week | June 25, 2007

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,

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. from Reuters | June 25, 2007

Online address book provider Plaxo has introduced a major overhaul in an effort to catch up with networking sites such as LinkedIn and Facebook. from The Register | June 25, 2007

Plaxo has finally lifted the veil on Plaxo 3, opening their new interface and strategy to the world for public beta testing. from Web Worker Daily | June 25, 2007

Morning. Mumble. Monday’s IT Blogwatch: in which Plaxo launches its new 3.0 service. Not to mention Queen in a Windows MessageBox… from ComputerWorld | June 25, 2007

Plaxo, the online contact manager, has launched its Plaxo 3.0 release today, bringing in a lot more sync and sharing functionality. from Mashable | June 25, 2007

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. from TechCrunch | June 25, 2007

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

…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. from Top

…Comcast created SmartZone in partnership with Hewlett-Packard Co., Zimbra, a specialist in messaging software and Plaxo, an online address book service. from Reuters | May 7, 2007

…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. from Top

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. from ComputerWorld | March 20, 2007

…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.” from ClickZ | February

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… from Wired News | February 1, 2007

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 from The Observer | October 15, 2006

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

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

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. from CNET | August 22, 2006

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

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

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

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. from NetworkWorld | May 24, 2006

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

Plaxo, the online address book company, announced Monday plans to acquire HipCal with the intent of strengthening its online calendaring options. from NetworkWorld | May 2, 2006

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

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 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,

In a world of multiple e-mail addresses, phone numbers and changing locations, staying in touch isn’t always an easy task. from Internetnews.com | January 6, 2006

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. from Enterprise Storage Forum | December 7, 2005

Plaxo Toolbar for Thunderbird will allow Thunderbird users to update their e-mail contacts and calendars automatically using Plaxo’s software. from ComputerWorld | July 27, 2005

These [Plaxo] enhancements give AOL a slight lead in the battle among portals and operators… from Forrester Research | July 11, 2005

If you haven’t tried Plaxo, I’d encourage you to check it out… from eWeek | July 7, 2005

from SiliconBeat | July 6, 2005

rom BetaNews | July 6, 2005

from CBS Marketwatch | July 6, 2005

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. from The Motley Fool | July

With all the new and free services America Online is offering lately a little help on organizing that information wouldn’t hurt. Enter Plaxo… from InternetNews.com | July 6, 2005

from eWeek | July 6, 2005

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… from C|Net | June 21, 2005

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. from San Francisco Chronicle | June 13, 2005

from PC World | June 9, 2005

from InternetNews.com | June 9, 2005

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… from BusinessWeek | May 2, 2005

from New York Times | April 18, 2005

Not only does Plaxo help ensure address books are up to date but Plaxo serves as a great client ‘tickler.’ from smallbiztechnology.com | April 12, 2005

It’s [Plaxo Mobile Access] an easy alternative to having names and numbers available when you switch cell phones. from Bloomberg Radio | March 31, 2005

Plaxo’s user base has grown steadily, to 5.5 million today, and devotees love how it has simplified staying in touch. from BusinessWeek | March 22, 2005

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. from San Francisco Chronicle | January 23, 2005

from InternetNews | November 22, 2004

from Young Money | October 19, 2004

from eWeek | September 9, 2004

from Network World | August 9, 2004

from Red Herring | August 4, 2004

from Canada.com | July 21, 2004

from ZDNet UK | June 16, 2004

from CBS MarketWatch | June 15, 2004

from Red Herring | June 7, 2004

from Hindu Business Line | May 31, 2004

from Washington Post | May 24, 2004

from New York Times | May 24, 2004

from InternetNews.com | May 24, 2004

from Silicon Valley Business Journal | May 24, 2004

from Mercury News | May 24, 2004

from CNET News.com | May 23, 2004

from InternetNews.com | May 15, 2004

from WebProNews | May 13, 2004

from New York Times | April 5, 2004

from Columbus Dispatch | March 22, 2004

from Miami Herald | March 21, 2004

from Wall St. Journal | March 4, 2004

from BusinessWeek online | February 20, 2004

from Charlotte Observer | February 16, 2004

from TIME Asia Magazine | November 10, 2003

from 280 Group | October 3, 2003

from Inc.com | September 30, 2003

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from PC Magazine | March 19, 2003

from BusinessWeek online | March 6, 2003

from WIRED News | November 12, 2002

from Associated Press (Mercury News) | November 12, 2002