Valleywag
once you're lucky, twice you're good
Posts Tagged “
plaxo
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once you're lucky, twice you're good
acquisitions
Comcast acquires Plaxo, after unbearably long courtship
Months after rumors of its interest first surfaced, Comcast has officially bought Plaxo. Terms weren't disclosed, but we last heard that the price was rumored to be around $175 million. For now, Comcast is keeping Plaxo and its engineering team in place in Mountain View, giving the cable company a toehold in Silicon Valley. I briefly spoke to Plaxo marketing dude John McCrea, who outlined some possibilities for how Plaxo could apply social networking to Comcast's Web properties. John, sounds great, but I'd be happy if your engineers could just figure out how to connect my Comcast.net Internet ID with my Comcast.com billing account.
earnings
"We are not spending any time on any of the large transformative acquisitions that have been speculated about, like Yahoo! or Sprint," said CEO Brian Roberts. No official word about small ones like Plaxo. [AP]
Comcast's fourth-quarter earnings
Comcast reported a 54 percent jump in fourth quarter profits due primarily to increased customer spending and added revenues from acquired companies. Comcast also announced a dividend of 6.25 cents per share for the quarter and said it plans to spend $6.9 billion on share buybacks before 2010."We are not spending any time on any of the large transformative acquisitions that have been speculated about, like Yahoo! or Sprint," said CEO Brian Roberts. No official word about small ones like Plaxo. [AP]
deals
Comcast to Plaxo: "Yeah, I'd sync that" -- for $175 million
We keep hearing Plaxo has signed a deal to sell the company. But is the buyer Google — where engineer Brad Fitzpatrick is buddy-buddy with Plaxo's Joseph Smarr? Or is it Comcast? The latter. Comcast, we're told, has bought Plaxo for $175 million in cash. While Plaxo has tried to reinvent itself as a social network, its still primarily used as an online address book. And that's the appeal to Comcast. More »
deals
Plaxo torn between two lovers?
Is Plaxo going to Google, as some rumors have it? Possibly. We hear Joe Kraus, a Google executive knee-deep in its effort to catch up in social networking, skipped the company trip to Disneyland this week so he could finish a deal. But other insiders say Google's not doing a deal with Plaxo. Another plausible bidder: Comcast. More »
deals
Google to buy Plaxo -- and a new pal -- for $200 million?
Plaxo, the contact-sharing service trying to reinvent itself as a social network, may have sold itself to Google for something close to $200 million. And if the rumor's true, I think the companies may be doing it out of friendship. One could bloviate endlessly here about industry consolidation, user-data portability, and so on — and I'm sure you'll read plenty of that. I think the real reason is much simpler. Brad Fitzpatrick, the LiveJournal founder now leading Google's social-network strategy, wants to work with Joseph Smarr, Plaxo's chief platform architect. I sat with the two at lunch at the Web 2.0 Summit last year, and they got along famously. More »
joseph smarr
Joseph Smarr is Plaxo's chief platform architect and one of the data-portability Share Bears. He just wants you to be able to snuggle your friends from one website to the next. How sweet! Smarr gave a speech on the subject at this weekend's Foo Camp nerdfest. I'd do a 100-word version of it, but I just can't keep up with the geek rock star's mile-a-minute pace.
Plaxo's Share Bear speed-talks his way through friends-list chat
Joseph Smarr is Plaxo's chief platform architect and one of the data-portability Share Bears. He just wants you to be able to snuggle your friends from one website to the next. How sweet! Smarr gave a speech on the subject at this weekend's Foo Camp nerdfest. I'd do a 100-word version of it, but I just can't keep up with the geek rock star's mile-a-minute pace.
separated at net worth
The Share Bears in the Land Without Portability
Caring is sharing, people, especially when it comes to your personal data. Leading developers from important social-network sites joining a "data-portability" advocacy group doesn't represent history in the making. It's a marketing campaign to make everyone feel sickly sweet, knowing that these websites are so concerned about our information. Like the Care Bears, by signing on to the DataPortability Working Group, top coders like Brad Fitzpatrick, Dave Recordon, and Ben Ling have joined forces to form a group which we can only call by one name. Presenting: The Share Bears! More »
rumormonger
Is Plaxo ready to sell to Facebook?
It's curious that rumors of a Plaxo sale exploded at the same time that Robert Scoble got his Facebook account suspended using a secret, unreleased tool for extracting data from Facebook. Curious, too, that Plaxo is so eager to milk the incident for good PR. While a battle of words takes place in public, we hear that quieter talks are happening behind the scenes: A sale of Plaxo to Facebook. A clash between the companies' backers, though — the powerful VC Michael Moritz and the rising VC star Peter Thiel — could sink any deal. More »
6:30 AM on Fri Jan 4 2008
By Owen Thomas
2,698 views,
7 comments
Latest by n/a: I'd heard a comcast acquisition of Plaxo was all but done -- that these discussions have been going on for months. more »
great moments in pr
How Plaxo took advantage of Scoble
Did Plaxo exploit blogger Robert Scoble by cajoling him into breaking Facebook's terms of service to test a new feature, temporarily getting his account suspended? Plaxo executive John McCrea would prefer you didn't think so. "Biggest regret? A lot of folks saying/thinking we took advantage of you. Bummer," McCrea Twittered. Note that McCrea didn't say he regretted actually taking advantage of Scoble. More »
facebook
Scoble triumphantly returns to Facebook
Facebook quickly reversed its decision to ban egoblogger Robert Scoble. He promised not to repeat the stunt of scraping their site for information about his friends. Facebook, for its part, said that the banning was the result of an automated process — but it's unlikely to give up its data without similar fights. Scoble quickly went live on Mogulus to hold court and entertain questions, support, and criticism. And he's having a grand old time! More »
bad ideas
Why Robert Scoble got banned from Facebook
Illustrious egoblogger Robert Scoble, the Paris Hilton of Silicon Valley, has committed the geek equivalent of a DUI. He has, by his own admission, violated Facebook's terms of service, and had his account suspended — 5,000 friends and all. Scoble's sin? He used a script to export his Facebook address-book information to Plaxo, which runs a competing social network. Running such scripts has long been forbidden, though Scoble argues Facebook should open up its information. Unlikely, given Facebook's history. More »
11:13 AM on Thu Jan 3 2008
By Owen Thomas
3,178 views,
13 comments
Latest by n/a: How can Facebook criticize Plaxo for doing exactly what they have been doing by extracting address books from Yahoo and Gmail? You can't have it both ways. It's hypocritical. And, from a user's point of view, the information in my address more »
acquisitions
Plaxo for sale
The New York Times reports that address-book service Plaxo is seeking up to $100 million from buyers. Reporter Andrew Ross Sorkin writes, "Plaxo, which has been overtaken by rivals like LinkedIn and Facebook, has tried to reinvent itself as an aggregate of information from other social networking sites," joining Google's OpenSocial initiative in November. That spiked usage among customers. Selling now may be not desperation, but timeliness.
joseph smarr
The synching man's rock band
Apparently someone told Joseph Smarr, Plaxo's chief platform architect, that he's a "rock star." Joseph, Joseph, Joseph. They were referring to your programming skills. Smarr does have the rock-and-roll look down, if not the sound. Here's a pic of him striking a hot pose. More »
lawsuits
There was a rumor floating around last year that Valley bad boy Sean Parker was forced out of startup Plaxo for a cocaine arrest. Turns out that rumor wasn't exactly true. According to a transcription of Mark Zuckerberg's deposition from the ConnectU v. Facebook case, it was Facebook, not Plaxo, which dropped Peter Thiel's protégé from its executive ranks after Parker was arrested for possession while at a house party. A house party Parker attended with a female Facebook employee who was also a Stanford undergrad at the time. Parker earlier told Valleywag that the arrest was "a misunderstanding." We'll say.
Sean Parker was kicked out of Facebook for cocaine-related arrest
There was a rumor floating around last year that Valley bad boy Sean Parker was forced out of startup Plaxo for a cocaine arrest. Turns out that rumor wasn't exactly true. According to a transcription of Mark Zuckerberg's deposition from the ConnectU v. Facebook case, it was Facebook, not Plaxo, which dropped Peter Thiel's protégé from its executive ranks after Parker was arrested for possession while at a house party. A house party Parker attended with a female Facebook employee who was also a Stanford undergrad at the time. Parker earlier told Valleywag that the arrest was "a misunderstanding." We'll say.
the chart
OpenSocial turns Plaxo growth chart into a hockey stick
Call Google's OpenSocial intiative a PR scam if you want. Executives from social network Plaxo don't care — because for them, it was a successful PR scam. Take a look at the chart they provided CNET. Since Google announced its "open" alternative to Facebook's developer platform and included Plaxo as a launch partner, growth at Pulse, Plaxo's social network/address book hybrid, took on hockey-stick dimensions. More »
opensocial
Another minute, another Google Gang member
According to a source, blog-software company Six Apart has joined as another partner for Google's OpenSocial platform. For those of you keeping count at home, don't bother. The list is surely to grow as word gets out. Social network Friendster, for example, wasn't asked to join the Google Gang. The pioneering social network begged to be included after a story leaked on TechCrunch. Google's secrecy is making the whole "open" affair less than transparent, as different names leak to different reporters. Here's a list of media outlets and the OpenSocial partners they list. More »
the chart
