alarm:clock

Social Networking - Thursday, May 15, 2008

Comcast Buys Social Networking's Plaxo - Nobody Gets It

Online address book Plaxo announced today that it has been bought for an undisclosed amount by Comcast. Plaxo has been around the block. It was co-founded by Sean Parker - former Napster pin-up. The Mountain View-based startup was funded by Sequoia Capital, among others. The site reported 15M users October 2006. The original Plaxo idea was novel. Plaxo provides automatic updating of contact information. Users and their contacts store their information on Plaxo's servers. When this information is edited by the user, the changes appear in the address books of all those who listed the account changer in their own Plaxo books. Last year, we saw the launch of Plaxo Pulse. The service enables sharing of content from multiple across blogs, photos, social networking services, rating services, etc. Users can share and view content according to categories like friends, family or business network. Today we learn that Comcast has paid an undisclosed amount for Plaxo. We think that Plaxo has its aggressive partnership approach to thank. Plaxo has partnered with Google's OpenSocial, AOL and last year Comcast. All of these deals created familiarity which eventually led to a buyer. Reading posts around the Net, the consensus seems to be... Continue...