Monday, November 12, 2007
Plaxo: the social outcast of social networking sites?
"Three Rings for the Elven-kings under the sky,
Seven for the Dwarf-lords in their halls of stone,
Nine for Mortal Men doomed to die,
One for the Dark Lord on his dark throne
In the Land of Mordor where the Shadows lie.
One Ring to rule them all, One Ring to find them,
One Ring to bring them all and in the darkness bind them
In the Land of Mordor where the Shadows lie." The Fellowship of The Ring - JRR Tolkein
So many rings, so many different uses - the same applies today to social networking websites! Just like Tolkein's rings, there are different sites for different needs - MySpace and Localisten for the kids, Facebook for friends, LinkedIn and aSmallWorld for business networkers.
The thing is, there are so many of these sites now that people are forced to pick and choose. I can't join them all: I'm already on XING so I don't need Viadeo, which I understand is quite big in France; I have a user:pass somewhere for the Calando Club but never got past the front page, and so on. I've Twittered a few times but when I'm also updating using Facebook, why repeat myself? As for Dodgeball ... well. I'm just too old for a site like that.
Perhaps when Web 2.0 really lives up to its name, one of these social networking sites will emerge as an aggregator for content from all the others - pulling everything together into one big, happy family.
So far Facebook is the surprise early leader here, allowing me to at least pull in lists from LinkedIn and XING, and to belong to the aSW user group.
Just like in real life there's also a social outcast among social networking sites. Step forwards Plaxo, a site that began life as an online repository of business cards. Boy, did I get sick of those automated emails asking me to update my contact details - sometimes even presenting me with a poor quality black-and-white scan of my business card.
Then last week, Plaxo reinvented itself, launching a service called Pulse, and I started getting invitations, starting as a trickle but by late last week, this had turned into a deluge (in terms of social networking site invitations, anyway).
I had to try - and Pulse isn't too bad - it looks like the Facebook friend updates. There are still some glitches - for example it doesn't seem to want to let me confirm all of my network contacts. It also shows promise in being able to sync with other sites like last.fm and Flickr, and some others I don't (yet) use such as Furl, Jaiku and ImageShack.
For many people, Plaxo is still the social outcast but perhaps Pulse is the start of its rehabilitation?
It's clearly going to take a while for Plaxo to win the hearts of many - who, like me, tired long ago of those facile "update your business data" emails that would have bounced anyway if I'd changed my email (doh).
Seven for the Dwarf-lords in their halls of stone,
Nine for Mortal Men doomed to die,
One for the Dark Lord on his dark throne
In the Land of Mordor where the Shadows lie.
One Ring to rule them all, One Ring to find them,
One Ring to bring them all and in the darkness bind them
In the Land of Mordor where the Shadows lie." The Fellowship of The Ring - JRR Tolkein
So many rings, so many different uses - the same applies today to social networking websites! Just like Tolkein's rings, there are different sites for different needs - MySpace and Localisten for the kids, Facebook for friends, LinkedIn and aSmallWorld for business networkers.
The thing is, there are so many of these sites now that people are forced to pick and choose. I can't join them all: I'm already on XING so I don't need Viadeo, which I understand is quite big in France; I have a user:pass somewhere for the Calando Club but never got past the front page, and so on. I've Twittered a few times but when I'm also updating using Facebook, why repeat myself? As for Dodgeball ... well. I'm just too old for a site like that.
Perhaps when Web 2.0 really lives up to its name, one of these social networking sites will emerge as an aggregator for content from all the others - pulling everything together into one big, happy family.
So far Facebook is the surprise early leader here, allowing me to at least pull in lists from LinkedIn and XING, and to belong to the aSW user group.
Just like in real life there's also a social outcast among social networking sites. Step forwards Plaxo, a site that began life as an online repository of business cards. Boy, did I get sick of those automated emails asking me to update my contact details - sometimes even presenting me with a poor quality black-and-white scan of my business card.
Then last week, Plaxo reinvented itself, launching a service called Pulse, and I started getting invitations, starting as a trickle but by late last week, this had turned into a deluge (in terms of social networking site invitations, anyway).
I had to try - and Pulse isn't too bad - it looks like the Facebook friend updates. There are still some glitches - for example it doesn't seem to want to let me confirm all of my network contacts. It also shows promise in being able to sync with other sites like last.fm and Flickr, and some others I don't (yet) use such as Furl, Jaiku and ImageShack.
For many people, Plaxo is still the social outcast but perhaps Pulse is the start of its rehabilitation?
It's clearly going to take a while for Plaxo to win the hearts of many - who, like me, tired long ago of those facile "update your business data" emails that would have bounced anyway if I'd changed my email (doh).
Labels: social networking, web 2.0
# posted by Nesjo : 09:46
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