Is Plaxo now selling the personal contacts Scoble harvested?
January 4, 2008 //
Now I can see why Plaxo were busy harvesting personal contact details belonging to users on Facebook, without anyone’s permission. They were looking to bump their numbers to increase their valuation. Robert, I’d love your take on this now.
For those of you still saying that it was ok for Robert and Plaxo to do this.
- I gave my personal contact details to Facebook.
- I did not give them to any individual.
- I did not give any company or any friend permission to disclose my personal contact details to anyone.
My friendship was violated whether some of you think it was right or not.
Some people hide their personal details from the world because they only want their friends to see them. Did Robert respect their decision by not harvesting their details with the view to giving them to another company?
According to the New York Times
AN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Plaxo, a site that helps users keep their friends’ contact information up to date, is considering a sale of the company for as much as $200 million, media reports said on Thursday.
Plaxo is seeking as much as $100 million and has hired Revolution Partners to advise it on a deal, the New York Times reported, citing people briefed on the offering.
Private Equity Hub, a blog edited by Thomson Financial editor-at-large Daniel Primack, said Plaxo was considering an unsolicited offer of about $200 million, but had not retained any bank to advise it.
Officials from Plaxo and Revolution could not be reached for comment.
Fast-growing social networks like privately held Facebook and LinkedIn might be interested in acquiring Plaxo despite its “flat growth” in 2006 to 2007, said Michael Osterman, head of messaging research and consulting firm Osterman Research.
“It might make sense for a consumer-oriented social network (like Facebook) to acquire a business-oriented social network” like Plaxo, he said.
Osterman said he expects more social networking sites to acquire each other over the next 18 months as these Web sites seek to expand ways in which users can stay connected to friends, family and business contacts.
Microsoft Corp took a small stake in Facebook for $240 million last year, and could also be a potential suitor for Plaxo, according to Osterman. LinkedIn has been the subject of buyout speculation, including reports it was at one point a target for News Corp..
Emily Riley, an analyst at Jupiter Research, said a sale would make sense for a “mid-tier” social network like Plaxo because it is difficult to survive independently unless without unique features or loyal customers.
Plaxo has raised over $20 million in venture capital funding to date from backers including Sequoia Capital, Globespan Capital Partners, Cisco Systems and DAG Ventures.
The company helps users synchronize address books and calendar data. When a friend changes their phone number or other contact details, the site automatically updates that information in a user’s address book.
Plaxo programs also work in conjunction with popular e-mail and messaging systems, such as Microsoft Outlook e-mail and AOL’s instant messaging.
Plaxo said in mid-2007 that it had signed up more than 15 million users, although the number of currently active users is unknown.
(Reporting by Anupreeta Das and Ritsuko Ando, editing by Phil Berlowitz)
Source: New York Times
If this is true, can anyone defend Plaxo now?
Andy Oakes says 
James Pearce says 
Joe Scanlon says 
Scoble claimed in yesterday’s video chat that it was in a test Plaxo account which is (was?) being deleted afterwards. I didn’t get the impression that the data would be used anywhere else but either Scoble was hopelessly naive in this experiment or totally irresponsible.
Whatever the case I’m glad I’m not one of his 4,999 contacts in FB as I don’t need or want any more email spam.
January 4th, 2008
Hi Paul,
Im not saying that I want data to be harvested.I want to be in charge of my data and own it myself and not locked into one site.
Ina
January 4th, 2008
@Ian - I didn’t want to make any assumptions about what you meant, hence the question
I think there are two separate conversations here:
1) You want to own your data and not have it locked into a site. I agree.
2) Other people shouldn’t be allow to harvest your contact details to supply a company who wants to sell you stuff or increase their share price by own more ‘customers’.
What do you think of point 2?
Point 2 is the issue I have with Plaxo and Scoble harvesting *my* contact details. I gave my details to Facebook only. I connected to Robert, but I didn’t give him permission to use my contact details for business use outside of Facebook.
January 4th, 2008
Paul other people should *not* be allowed to harvest your contact details.Its the same thing as business cards i give you a business card and i expect you to give it to the right person for the right reason and not to someone for the wrong reason.
Social contract keeps the information or the tie from being abused.Good reputation building.People are free to do with the data that they get from you that you give them via their business cards.I dont think people should have things happening to their information without their knowledge.
My point I was making is that when you join these sites and look at the terms of agreement they can do what they please more or less with your data.
Data in life should be your own and not some one elses.In general if you give away my information too freely i wont trust you either.As it stands at the moment there is no other social networking model and these type of sites are all we have.
I just dont believe that relying on these types of social networking sites should as FB/Plxo/Linked are be the way forward for great networking.The sites will evolve.They have to.
Twitter sessimic/Jaiku are one such evolution.When orkut came out everyone signed up got bored and moved on.Facebook does have some good add ons-Im not denying that.Maybe all of this will help progress with a more Open Social Web and get people thinking and talking.
January 4th, 2008
@Ina I’m pretty sure we’re in agreement. I wouldn’t say the sites are all we have though. We’ve been socialising for years. Facebook and other sites/technologies like it, just make it easier.
Facebook does allow us to extract data. The method applied is a combination of a Facebook application and human interaction. The latter involves a person copying and pasting and when it comes to the email address, you simply write it down. So, it’s all there, it’s just time consuming.
So, my thoughts are simple, Facebook isn’t enabling easy data extraction as it would make it all to easy for companies/people to harvest and SPAM as could be seen from Plaxo.
Perhaps I just give the benefit of the doubt too often
January 5th, 2008
I’d love to say I’m surprised this happened, but I’m not. The mania for adding friends on sites like Facebook had to lead to someone abusing the system. I’m glad it was Robert Scoble who did it because the issue is wide open now.
It sort of reminds me of how photographers react when their images are misused. Maybe we need a licensing scheme for personal data now? An “all rights reserved” for family information perhaps, and some sort of CC license for business information? Crazy idea?
January 7th, 2008
@Donncha some good ideas there. I’ve emailed the Creative Commons team to ask for their thoughts.
January 8th, 2008
By the way Donncha, what do you think about Wordpress having built-in functionality to enable bloggers to easily apply a Creative Commons license to their blogs? Taking it a step further, how about Content Labels in general for assertions that can be self-made?
January 8th, 2008
Hi Donncha and Paul, CC has a WordPress plugin that we’d love to see distributed with WordPress and in wordpress.com.
See http://wiki.creativecommons.org/WpLicense
January 10th, 2008
Mike you might want to consider http://terapad.com too - I know the founder and can put you in touch. Let me know what you think.
Donncha, looking forward to your thoughts regarding Creative Commons and Content Labels being integrated with Wordpress - just as we’re seeing Microformats and OpenID being adopted more and more.
January 10th, 2008