Plaxo Ditches Its Social Networking Plan, Goes Back To Its Original Vision

Plaxo, an online address book founded by Napster co-founder Sean Parker is switching its gears and moving back to what it was actually created for. After getting its hands dirty in social networking, Plaxo now plans to give a boost to its original vision by adding new features to its contacts management service.

The company has admitted its failure to integrate social networking in its original service. In fact, it has ended up with very few users actually signing-up. It said, “Over the years, the tricky part has been finding the most non-intrusive process for enabling contacts to share their updates with one another; thereby, realizing the most value from the Plaxo address book. Admittedly, our initial solutions, although effective, were not all well received. But we listened, learned, and evolved our process over the years”.

Plaxo’s CEO Justin Miller has posted an answer on Quora detailing the need for the company to focus on its original strategy. “Plaxo is transitioning itself back into the world’s leading online address book. While Plaxo dabbled in the social networking space for a bit, we have realized that people don’t need another social network or business network – Facebook and LinkedIn are meeting most people’s needs.”

Also, Plaxo had earlier been accused of too spammy which is why it has moved away from emailing its users’ contacts on their behalf to placing this function under the control of its users. The service will soon be launching a new service that will automatically and pro-actively help keep your address book up to date, even if the people in your address book are not Plaxo members.

Is it a right move by Plaxo? And the bigger question, Should smaller companies stop integrating social media into their services because of the presence of giants like Facebook?