Plaxo: The New Napster
Sean Parker is at it again. This time it's not about the sharing of music but the sharing of contact info. I think it is a very cool tool. Here's how it works:
A Plaxo user sends plain-text e-mails to friends and colleagues requesting contact information updates. Recipients can reply to the request by updating their info in the template provided or by e-mailing free-form text, which Plaxo parses using natural language processing technology. It integrates seamlessly with Outlook.
Eventually everyone has the software and whenever you update your contact info, it is automatically updated to everyone in your contact list.
Sure it's beta and there are bugs. Also, I'm sure some people will hate getting requests to update their contact info.
There has to be some big brother marketing scenario to this down the road though:-)
Story on Wired:
