I just prefer Plaxo. Hey I am a member of both!
LInkedin is described in Wikipedia as 'a business-oriented social networking site' whereas Plaxo is described as 'an online address book service'. Both interestingly (if not unsurprisingly) are based in Mountain View and more significantly both are at least part funded by venture capital specialists Sequoia Capital.
My contention is that they both deliver an excellent service however right now Plaxo, with only 15 million users compared to 21 for Linkedin, offers me a more useful set of capabilties. Yes, they do overlap, but Linkedin appears to be operating a hybrid business service, a personal classified ad plus people finder whereas Plaxo is both keeping my contacts current (a la Linkedin), working off-line to keep my directories up to date and with a eye to the problems of mobile phone users keeping my HTC Touch Cruise aligned to all of my other contacts.
More importantly than this is the integration with Facebook, Flickr, Twitter, Blogs et al in a very clean interface making Plaxo 'Pulse' and invaluable tool for my daily work life. Linkedin seems to be like a perpetual 'I'm looking for work' classified without going the whole hog of placing your resume on Monster.
Both have a place and I could easily see the two consolidating as a point in the future, I just hope we end up with the Plaxo UI.
Comments (1)
Interesting Ian. You have probably made the right choice if your aspirations are no greater than "just" having an address book of contacts that keeps up to date across whatever media you happen to have available to communicate through at any given time. But isn't just having their details to hand a bit of a lame goal? Shouldn't you be expecting more, such that those contacts are actively networking you into their contacts, or endorsing your business? Although Wikipedia's defeinition of what Plaxo is sells it short a little, it certainly doesn't help you to grow your business in the way that some other business focused Web 2.0 services do (I count my own WecanDo.BIZ service amongst them). In my opinion, that means you're missing a trick.
Ian Hendry
http://www.wecando.biz
Posted by Ian Hendry | April 14, 2008 1:39 PM
Posted on April 14, 2008 13:39