What's a Plaxo?

A friend of mine got an invite from someone on Plaxo to use it, and he asked me what the heck Plaxo was. I responded with way more than what he probably wanted, so I figured I'd post it since I've been so absent lately.

Plaxo made a name for themselves years ago (I think it was like early 2000's) as being a contact management thingy. Problem is, they made a bigger name for themselves as being spammers. See, they had all these people's contact information since their idiot friends put them into the system. So tons of people got bombarded with spam (if I recall, it wasn't necessarily evil spam, I think it was just a barrage of sign-up now things from Plaxo, but spam none the less).

Fast forward to today. They've claimed to have changed their ways(and I'm fairly certain they're under new management, so it's possible), and from what I've been reading about them, they do seem to be on the up and up now. However, the same can be said about Real.They pissed everyone off, and have since corrected their errors. At the same time, you won't see me downloading Real Player.

Now, after quitting with the slimy tactics and going legit, Plaxo boasts something like 12 million users or so. With this large user base, and the current "hotness" of Facebook and social networks,Plaxo has launched its own. They figure that you're already using them to manage your contacts, why not include photos, news, and whatever else too. It doesn't seem like a completely horrible idea,as they pretty much went from 0 to 12 million users of its social network overnight. Whether or not it'll actually go anywhere, I don't know, but I don't think that they're going away anytime soon.

All that said, personally, I wouldn't go near them with a 10-foot pole. I'm not one to easily find forgiveness, and their past transgressions pissed me off quite a bit as I was one of the many that got pounded with invitations to join. So I'd go ahead and stay back,and just watch rather than actually joining in. I don't think many of you need any additional help managing your contacts, as there are plenty of alternatives out there that you're already using if you needed help there.