Plaxo

Plaxo, Inc. is a in July 2001 by Sean Parker - a co-founder of music file-sharing platform Napster - based, Minh Nguyen, Todd Masonis and Cameron Ring California company, the social-network services and software for centralized management of networked online address books offers.

Plaxo, Inc. operates out of Mountain View, California. Since July 2005, the company cooperates with AOL and integrated services for AOL Instant Messenger ( AIM). Plaxo had in October 2006 around 15 million users.

Early 2008, Plaxo was acquired by Comcast Interactive Media.

Services

The service provides automatic updating of contact information through the server of the provider. The contact and the logged user's address book are stored on the servers of Plaxo. On request Plaxo sends to selected items an email, with a request to update their contact details. The contact details of registered Plaxo users can be automatically updated, for not registered in users these e-mails are sent with request for a correction.

The Plaxo address book can be viewed online world, but the service also offers plug-ins for all popular e- mail address and other programs such as Microsoft Outlook and Outlook Express, Mozilla Thunderbird and the address book of Mac OS X. Other applications through a programming interface ( API ) can be integrated.

Criticism

Plaxo is due to the collection and uncomplicated exchange of address data in the criticism from privacy advocates. Plans to earn money by passing on contact details, Plaxo has indicated but exposed.