Plaxo Ends Annoying Update Spam

Welcome news. The Wall Street Journal's Jeremy Wagstaff reports today that Plaxo will no longer send out those annoying "Hi, I'm updating my address book. Please take a moment to update your latest contact information..." emails.

Last week, Wagstaff reports, the address book company reported on its blog that it was ending the practice.

The Plaxo post explains why the spam began in the first place:

"When we started Plaxo, we had a vision to create a self-updating address book. The idea seems pretty simple: I maintain my own contact information, and when I change it, it automatically updates in my friends' address books. Similarly, when my friends update their information, it changes in my address book. If everyone uses Plaxo, then like magic, everyone stays up-to-date and never has to worry about this problem again. Better yet, Plaxo would plug in to Outlook and other popular address books, for maximum convenience.

The big 'if' in all of this was of course convincing everyone in the world to use Plaxo -- and contact management is not always the sexiest of problems. Until large numbers of people started using Plaxo, automatic updating wouldn't provide much value.

We therefore came up with a model where people could still find value in using our service without there being a large network. I could download Plaxo and in a few steps e-mail contacts asking them for their up-to-date information. Then, usually within a few days (usually more like a few hours) my contacts would respond and my address would be updated. Some of my contacts would see this as a valuable service, and also start using Plaxo..."

Now the company says it has enough members it no longer needs to use this strategy...

Thank you!