Wow. From where I sit this morning . . . Plaxo Pulse Beta seems the perfect business social networking Killer App.
It has been a while since I've seen a social networking product that offers a real return on the amount of energy one is expected to expend maintaining the network. Plaxo Pulse is liked LinkedIn but with meaningful, up-to-date contact information. In fact, it keeps your contact information up to date, integrating nicely with Outlook.
Facebook is too "best friend" oriented. Nice to visit, but not built to be helpful with business networking. LinkedIn is, well, annoying. They've attempted to regulate relationships rather than allow people to regulate them themselves. In fact, LinkedIn takes away your ability to invite people to connect if a handful of people refuse your invitation. I mean, if someone invites you to connect that you don't want to connect to . . ."just say 'no' " And LinkedIn caps the total number of invitations one can send over the lifetime of your membership. As a early adopter of LinkedIn and someone who is heavily networked (in a former life I was a journalist; I currently head a retained search firm), I used up all of my invitations . . .and now what am I supposed to do? Let my LinkedIn membership go fallow? Beg for more invites to be given in dribs and drabs, which currently is what LinkedIn expects its members to do? I don't think so.
Unlike LinkedIn, there's no immediately apparent and creepy Big Brother aspect to Plaxo Pulse. For a while, I hesitated using Plaxo simply to keep my contact information up-to-date as some people seem to get upset with "Plaxo SPAM" but the added benefit of networking makes it all seem worthwhile. That is why, this morning, I give them a big "thumbs up".
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