Plaxo was an online

address book An address book or a name and address book is a book, or a database used for storing entries called contacts. Each contact entry usually consists of a few standard fields (for example: first name, last name, company name, address, telephone n ...

that launched in 2002. It was a subsidiary of cable television company

Comcast Comcast Corporation (formerly known as American Cable Systems and Comcast Holdings),Before the AT&T merger in 2001, the parent company was Comcast Holdings Corporation. Comcast Holdings Corporation now refers to a subsidiary of Comcast Corpora ...

from 2008 to 2017. At one point it offered a

social networking service A social networking service or SNS (sometimes called a social networking site) is an online platform which people use to build social networks or social relationships with other people who share similar personal or career content, interests, ac ...

History

The company was founded by

Sean Parker Sean Parker (born December 3, 1979) is an American entrepreneur and philanthropist, most notable for co-founding the file-sharing computer service Napster, and serving as the first president of the social networking website Facebook. He also ...

and two

Stanford University Stanford University, officially Leland Stanford Junior University, is a private research university in Stanford, California. The campus occupies , among the largest in the United States, and enrolls over 17,000 students. Stanford is conside ...

engineering students, Todd Masonis and Cameron Ring. Rikk Carey joined Plaxo at its inception and led engineering and products for six years as Executive Vice President. Funded by

venture capital Venture capital (often abbreviated as VC) is a form of private equity financing that is provided by venture capital firms or funds to startups, early-stage, and emerging companies that have been deemed to have high growth potential or which h ...

including funds from

Sequoia Capital Sequoia Capital is an American venture capital firm. The firm is headquartered in Menlo Park, California, and specializes in seed stage, early stage, and growth stage investments in private companies across technology sectors. , Sequoia's total ...

, the service officially launched on November 12, 2002. On July 7, 2005, Plaxo announced it had struck a deal with

America Online AOL (stylized as Aol., formerly a company known as AOL Inc. and originally known as America Online) is an American web portal and online service provider based in New York City. It is a brand marketed by the current incarnation of Yahoo! Inc. ...

to integrate its contact management service with its AOL and

AOL Instant Messenger AIM (AOL Instant Messenger) was an instant messaging and presence computer program created by AOL, which used the proprietary OSCAR instant messaging protocol and the TOC protocol to allow registered users to communicate in real time. AIM w ...

products. In January 2007, Plaxo was criticized by technology journalist David Coursey, who was upset about receiving a number of requests from Plaxo users to update their contact information (similar to

spam Spam may refer to: * Spam (food), a canned pork meat product * Spamming, unsolicited or undesired electronic messages ** Email spam, unsolicited, undesired, or illegal email messages ** Messaging spam, spam targeting users of instant messaging ...

email), and who wondered how the company was planning to make money from a free service that collects personal contact and network information. However, after "changes at Plaxo and discussions with the company's remaining co-founders", Coursey reversed his stance. Plaxo also responded to these issues in a section of their website. On May 7, 2007,

announced that it had partnered with Plaxo in the launch of its universal communications service, SmartZone. On August 4, 2007 Plaxo announced the public beta of a social networking service called Plaxo Pulse. The service enabled sharing of content from multiple different sources across the social web, including blogs, photos, social networking services, rating services, and others. Users can selectively share and view content according to either pre-determined categories (e.g., friends, family, business network) or customized groups. Plaxo Pulse was the first site to feature a working version of an

OpenSocial OpenSocial is a public specification that defines a component hosting environment (container) and a set of common application programming interfaces (APIs) for web applications. Initially, it was designed for social network applications and d ...

container. In May 2008, Plaxo announced that it had signed an agreement to be acquired by Comcast. The terms of the deal were not disclosed. Comcast completed its purchase of Plaxo on July 1, 2008. That month the website reported 20 million users. In March 2010, it was announced that CEO Ben Golub would be replaced by the company’s general manager, Justin Miller. In March 2011 Plaxo's head of product management, Preston Smalley, was named general manager; at the same time, Plaxo announced that it was exiting social networking, ending the Plaxo Pulse social networking service, and introducing a new address book updating service. On October 1, 2017, Plaxo notified its users that it would be shutting down the Plaxo service at the end of the day on December 31, 2017.

Functionality

Plaxo provided automatic updating of contact information. Users and their contacts stored their information in the

cloud In meteorology, a cloud is an aerosol consisting of a visible mass of miniature liquid droplets, frozen crystals, or other particles suspended in the atmosphere of a planetary body or similar space. Water or various other chemicals may ...

on Plaxo's servers. When this information was edited by the user, the changes appeared in the address books of all those who listed the account changer in their own books. Once contacts were stored in the central location, it was possible to list connections between contacts and access the address book from anywhere. A Plaxo plug-in supported major address books including

Outlook Outlook or The Outlook may refer to: Computing * Microsoft Outlook, an e-mail and personal information management software product from Microsoft * Outlook.com, a web mail service from Microsoft * Outlook on the web, a suite of web applications ...

Outlook Express Outlook Express, formerly known as Microsoft Internet Mail and News, is a discontinued email and news client included with Internet Explorer versions 3.0 through to 6.0. As such, it was bundled with several versions of Microsoft Windows, from ...

Mozilla Thunderbird Mozilla Thunderbird is a free and open-source cross-platform email client, personal information manager, news client, RSS and chat client developed by the Mozilla Foundation and operated by subsidiary MZLA Technologies Corporation. The projec ...

, and

macOS macOS (; previously OS X and originally Mac OS X) is a Unix operating system developed and marketed by Apple Inc. since 2001. It is the primary operating system for Apple's Mac computers. Within the market of desktop and la ...

's Contacts, iOS and

BlackBerry The blackberry is an edible fruit produced by many species in the genus ''Rubus'' in the family Rosaceae, hybrids among these species within the subgenus ''Rubus'', and hybrids between the subgenera ''Rubus'' and ''Idaeobatus''. The taxonomy ...

, and others could be supported through an

application programming interface An application programming interface (API) is a way for two or more computer programs to communicate with each other. It is a type of software interface, offering a service to other pieces of software. A document or standard that describes how ...

. Additionally, Plaxo could be maintained online.

Plaxo 3.0

On June 24, 2007 Plaxo announced the public beta of a major new version of its service, called Plaxo 3.0. The service emphasizes "automated, multi-way sync."

Charging for Outlook synchronization service

On July 30, 2009, the previously-free synchronization services for Outlook moved to Plaxo's premium (paid) service. According to Plaxo, "this change will allow us to continue to invest in the development and support of this valuable (but high-cost) feature." Existing users of the free service were offered a 20% lifetime discount on Plaxo premium. This paid service was called Platinum Sync.

Personal Assistant

On March 16, 2011, Plaxo announced its Personal Assistant which updates users' address books with suggestions from publicly available information.

Mobile applications

On July 19, 2011, Plaxo announced an improved iPhone app; a new BlackBerry app; a Windows Mobile app; and syncing for Android phones with an app coming out by the end of September.

References

{{Comcast American social networking websites Personal information manager software for Windows Personal information manager software for macOS Professional networks Companies based in Sunnyvale, California Internet services supporting OpenID