Poll: Will You Still Use Plaxo?
Since we reported yesterday that cable and Internet provider Comcast had acquired social address book Plaxo for an estimated $150 million, we've been fielding a lot of comments and emails -- most of them not very supportive of the acquisition. Most people seem wary of Comcast -- which has a poor reputation on the web due to "bandwidth throttling" practices -- and some have told us that they'll be deleting their Plaxo accounts. How about you?
We noted yesterday that Plaxo's early reputation was that of "one of the biggest scum-bags of the mainstream social web," and Comcast has an even more tarnished reputation. Recently, Plaxo had started to soften that poor reputation in some circles, but selling to Comcast may have set them back to square one. "Given the histories of both companies, something devious is liable to happen," we predicted, and many of our readers agreed. But we're curious, with Comcast at the helm, will nix your Plaxo account? Let us know in the poll below and add your opinions in the comments.
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I deleted my account the moment I heard about this. Both companies have less that reputable pasts and I can't imagine what Comcast would do with my data, friends list, etc. It's one of the last companies I want to have access to that data.
I use LinkedIn more than Plaxo anyway (though I think LinkedIn ought to work more towards integration with other services like Plaxo did).
Honestly I hardly use it. Just like MySpace, Facebook, LinkedIn etc I'll keep it because different networks of people I know use different services and occasionally people I know find me through it. If they abuse it I'll delete it, but I didn't delete it last time, I haven't deleted MySpace and I didn't delete Facebook over the whole beacon thing. I don't have any information on there that couldn't be found a dozen other places online.
You used my suggestion!
I deleted my account yesterday. I don't feel terribly strongly about the merger, but I didn't really use Plaxo anyway, and there's no reason to stick around with Comcast in charge.
I deleted my account yesterday. It was pretty amazing how much Plaxo had succeeded in rebuilding its reputation, and how suddenly they negated all that progress with this deal.
I deleted my Plaxo account. I believed that Plaxo wasn't that evil after all but just wanted to grow faster.
I do believe though that Comcast is evil in its very roots. (I'm not one of the people claiming that Microsoft would be the ultimate evil, so it means something if I consider Comcast as being evil.)
Compared to that: I wouldn't have deleted my account if Plaxo was bought by Microsoft.
(I really want to stress the fact that Comcast is evil!)
What Travis (#1) said...
- PonB
Pretty amazing allergic reaction to this acquisition: I've been bombarded by emails, tweets, and posts todays, all calling for deleting your Plaxo account.
I'm among the people who never really saw Plaxo's value prop, being squeezed between LinkedIn and Facebook.
Maybe Comcast knows something we don't...
If LinkedIn were not such a walled garden (something that I consider to be worse than spam) I'd delete my Plaxo account immediately. The Comcast is not to be trusted.
It gave me a convenient excuse to kill a service I rarely if ever used. I never liked the email spam I got from them.
I don't like it either. But is there another way to sync contacts among Hotmail, Outlook, LInkedIn, Gmail, Yahoo, etc.?
There may be an obvious one that I'm missing. If so, someone tell me and I'll delete my Plaxo account right now.
I deleted my Plaxo account. Comcast has made it clear that "your privacy is optional" (deep packet inspection, anyone), and it's not only my data -- it's the data of everyone else in my address book.
Adding fuel to the fire, earlier this week I started receiving a bunch of unsolicited Plaxo "friend requests" from people I've never heard of.
I won't miss it.
I left back in 2005 when they spammed everyone I know, without my permission. Never went back, been bad mouthing them to everyone, personally and professionally, ever since.
Never had the misfortune of being tortured by having Comcast as my ISP. I have heard nothing but horror stories, though.
Here a litany of crimes against the Consumer, read'm and weep:
http://consumerist.com/consumer/comcast/
I can't figure out how to delete my fucking account on Plaxo.
-RC
All deals like this are good deals!
I am surprised by the number of ill-informed knee-jerk reactions. The problem is with Comcast, not with Plaxo!
Plaxo is indeed a good contact management system, and has recently been making interesting inroads in the social networking stage. The contributors to this thread accusing Plaxo of “spamming” are clearly not up-to-date.
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.
I have always thought of Plaxo as a service that uses its users, not a service that its users use. I've been professionally removing Plaxo for several years. About 60% of my business is annually renewed contracts with local businesses and upscale private individuals, and I will not sign a contract unless allowed to remove parasites such as Plaxo.
That's right, I said it: Parasites.
@PPMartin: how can someone who is reporting what happened to them personally "earlier this week" be out of date?
Deleted yesterday.
@Ryan, just do a "delete"-search in the help section.
I dont see what difference it makes. I only use it for the excellent syncing features. I never log onto the site itself anyway.
I deleted my account the moment I heard the news. I hated Plaxo for a long time (see #13's description of their spammy tactics), but I thought they were making progress in turning themselves around. Plaxo's Pulse life streaming service was kind of neat, if not for the fact that FriendFeed is way cooler. So I had signed up a few months ago, but never really used it.
Unfortunately, Comcast truly is one of the worst companies currently in existence. I had to switch to RCN a few months back and while RCNs customer service is notably worse, at least they aren't blocking my Skype calls.