Comcast Plus Plaxo: Not a Pretty Picture!
Communications giant Comcast has acquired social web application Plaxo for an estimated $150m or more. Techcrunch confirmed the deal first but offers an understated critique of the alliance. Many web users familiar with the operations of both companies are much more upset about the deal.
Plaxo has probably the most clouded reputation of any of the major participants in the current data portability discussion, except perhaps for Microsoft. Comcast is no angel either. Together the two companies will be ill prepared to serve end users well.
Users Want ISPs Out of the Way
The plan for Plaxo at Comcast appears to be for the acquired company to power media publishing, sharing, lifestream aggregation and presumably contact management. The problem is that there's a whole market of alternatives for those services and many users just want their ISPs to deliver the damn internet so they can use it however they see fit.
Comcast has done a poor job of this lately. By engaging in a practice called "traffic shaping," whereby the company throttles down the bandwidth available for activities like media downloading, Comcast has made itself the poster child proving that network neutrality is a valid concern. How much further would things need to go before Comcast slows the user experience to a crawl when users seek to visit sites that compete with Comcast properties? The kind of lifestream aggregation that Plaxo offers is an emerging bandwidth hog - perhaps Comcast customers ought not be allowed to use lifestreaming apps other than Plaxo.
Likewise, you'd expect your address book to mind its own business - but that's not what Plaxo has been about traditionally. Email inboxes around the world used to be filled up with spammy requests for contact info from Plaxo. ("hi, this is Joe, could you update the contact info I have for you in Plaxo?") While the company's earliest reputation as one of the biggest scum-bags of the mainstream social web has been greatly softened lately by a very charming (and now wealthy) young exec named Joseph Smarr, the old tarnish is hardly gone from many peoples' minds. Some users complain that Plaxo is still spammy and some people in data portability circles, where nouveau hip geeks like Plaxo (and yours truly) hang out, say that Plaxo is still clearly doing what's best for Plaxo above all else.
Maybe big money on the table means never having to do more than say you're sorry, but the Plaxo deal with Comcast is liable to hit more bumps in the road than just an unpopular history.
Mismatched Visions, If Everyone's Telling the Truth
One-stop social web shopping at your ISP isn't an unusual vision at all. Plaxo's data portability talk seems at risk of going out the window for the relatively cheap price of $150m, though. Comcast is far more likely to want Plaxo to power a new line of Comcast branded social web services than they are to want their customers running links off-site to Yahoo and Google properties through their Comcast experience.
Given the histories of both companies, something devious is liable to happen. Perhaps though Comcast just wanted to acquire some human resources, including people who figured out how to spam the whole web for contact information and just a few short years later end up hated less than a telco. That is impressive, even if not enough to warrant trust from users.
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As a Comcast customer (they are the only cable provider in my area) and someone who is nowhere near forgiving Plaxo, I hate this deal. I believe Comcast will try to force Plaxo on me every which way but lose. Thank god I don't use Comcast provided email, those that do are about to experience hell on earth.
We learned how to beta test from Microsoft . . . let's consider the possibilities if this does turn out well for interaction on the web.
Join me in welcoming the latest Mashup -- between Internet delivery, Telecommunications, Television, Videos, and the social web (and much more, I suspect). I'm thinking the next Mashup announcement will be that Open Social will be incorporated into next-generation set-top boxes . . .
Yuck! A match made in Hell. I feel sorry for the overlap user, people who have Comcast as their ISP and let Plaxo overrun their contacts - kiss you privacy goodbye! Now everyone in your address book can experience "COMCASTIC!" for themselves with daily, possibly hourly, emails like...
"Hey [ contact list name ] your friend [ insert your name here ] is using Comcast, shouldn't you? He loves it and wants you to switch..."
Gawd, what a nightmare. Can't Opt out ( read the Plaxo ToS ) can't sue ( Net Neutrality died on the floor of Congress ) and you'll have nothing else to talk about at the annual family dinner except to explain why you are spamming them to switch to Comcast.
Well, that's a kinda narrrow-minded view of a pretty important and interesting announcement that has major significance for the opening up of the Social Web, across not only the Web, but also the TV and mobile devices. Please judge us by what we actually make happen going forward. There are big and cool things that will happen as a result of this merger.
sounds like a love match made in 'hell' if you ask me. I hope they will be very happy together there. Better still if we can just forget them :)
I'm thinking ... delete Plaxo account in the morning.
I agree 100 percent. Although I live in germany and comcast has no business here, I'm deeply concerned about the politics of that company.
Deleted my plaxo-account today, I don't want to support comcast in any way.
I'm fond of Plaxo's well executed interface and features. They're probably under-adopted given the quality of their product, so if Comcast can just switch it on for all of their subscribers, this is a good thing for Plaxo. But like everybody else, I'll be watching closely how Comcast deals with the competition.
I actually came across this as I was doing some updates to my address book via Plaxo. I have not had any issues with Plaxo. While I am well aware of some of the stunts they pulled in the beginning I think they have learned from their mistakes. I'm not quite sure what to make of the Comcast deal but from what I can see they aren't about pushing it on their current customers but rather leveraging their other products to make this one better. Would that be such a horrible thing?
I always love how Comcast advertises their 'super fast' bandwidth and all the movies and marvelous multimedia you can watch. Then you download some movies and they throttle 'ya down! Are they going to start charging you more or throttle down your TV watching next?
Plaxo is a good contact management system, and has recently making made interesting inroads in the social networking stage. The contributors to this thread accusing Plaxo of "spamming" are clearly not up-to-date and rather ill-informed.
What I do hope, however, is that Comcast will not "mess up" Plaxo: ISPs should indeed focus on the "pipes" only.
The same way it is preferable not to use your ISP provided e-mail address, but rather an "independent" one, any service linked (biased?) to an ISP should be looked at with caution.
Much ado about nothing. I personally use Plaxo and have since the very beginning.
Folks tend to forget that when they started there were NO rules about how to do things. Now looking back with "rules" (forgetting for the moment that the original net wasn't about rules to begin with), they look like they broke some, and for shame being a pioneer... You have to break rules to move forward. You have to try things in order to make change.
You folks are the biggest bunch of non-forgivers I have run across. Every company makes mistakes, especially when there are no rules for doing what you are the first to do.
Now Comcast, clearly are scum of the earth. Please just deliver my damn packets where I want them to go without looking at each and every one of them. You are first and formost an ISP. Then you are content. Get out of my way please.
Ok enough of that.
Plaxo is awesome. For the first time I don't have to call up or email each of my friends and business contacts to get there damn updates. They just update their record and wala my address book reflects that. Why is that such a big no no?
I send out invites to new folks, I get old folks to update their info. Seems like a good idea. Gives me a way to make sure I can get to my peeps when I need to.
Get over it. I am more worried that Comcast will mess up a good service namely Plaxo.
OMG
why can't I get my comcast email
and when I login to my comcast account I get
Hi, whoever you are like Hi, kimmy178
(that is not me I know that)
Is this because of this Plaxo takeover
OMG please help!
OMG
why can't I get my comcast email
and when I login to my comcast account I get
Hi, whoever you are like Hi, kimmy178
(that is not me I know that)
Is this because of this Plaxo takeover
OMG please help!