If you’ve visited Plaxo.com in recent weeks, you’ve probably noticed a few changes. Specifically, a few weeks ago we updated the home page layout and the top-level navigation to give greater prominence and faster access to the online version of your address book.

These changes, in response to lots of feedback from our most loyal members, mark the kickoff of a major effort in 2010 to deliver on the vision of a “truly smart (and socially-aware) address book”. Today, we take another step down that pathway, with a major re-design of the interface and underlying infrastructure of the online portion of that smart address book.

Click on the Address Book tab in Plaxo.com, and you’ll see a new search-centric UI, focused on giving you the fastest possible access to the info you’re looking for on any of your contacts. The new design features find-as-you-type search and delivers major speed improvements – especially for those of you with large address books.

The Power of Categorization
In addition, you can now organize and communicate with your contacts using our new contact groups feature. Create, add, and email your groups with ease. You can add contacts to more than one contact group, which can be used, for example, if one of your friends is also a business associate and weekend tennis partner.

Put your Favorites Front and Center
Any contact you "star" becomes a favorite and will be directly accessible from the front page of your online address book. (Note: if you've imported contacts from GMail, you may see your "top contacts" from there have already been favorited. You can "un-favorite" a contact by clicking on its gold star.)

Where's My "Pulse"?
Of course, the webwide activity stream that we pioneered in 2007 under the brand “Pulse” is still very prominent (both as a home page module and a top-level tab); we’ve just renamed it simply, “Stream”. Future versions of the address book will tap this stream to give you a richer view of any contact at the moment it most matters – when you are about to communicate with them.

Just a Beginning
We hope you like these first few steps – and the ones that follow in the coming months. Along the way, we’re keenly interested in your feedback and your suggestions for what you’d like to see in future releases.

John McCrea
VP of Marketing

On your next visit to Plaxo.com, you’ll probably notice some changes. We’ve done a little clean up and re-design work to ring in the New Year. Specifically, we’ve changed the default view and the top-level navigation to give greater prominence and faster access to your smart address book.

Specifically, we’ve brought address book back up to the primary tabs (instead of just under “More”) and given the home page a new layout, with modules dedicated to the address book and to the web-wide activity stream aggregation feature we used to call “Pulse” (but have now renamed simply the “Stream”). This is just the first of many changes to come, as we take a fresh look at delivering on the vision of a truly smart (and socially aware) address book.

Of course, we will not abandon the mission of working toward an open and interoperable Social Web. Quite the contrary; we believe the industry is moving so quickly toward that natural end-state, that it presents an exciting new opportunity to re-imagine and expand the vision of an address book.

Along the way, we welcome your feedback, whether you’re a new member or someone who’s been along for the journey from the beginning. Onward!

John McCrea
VP of Marketing

Plaxo and Yahoo! have long been working together to improve the interoperability of our services, making the process more seamless, powerful, and user-friendly. And we've always done it in ways that are fundamentally open, so others can learn from our experiences and get the same benefits elsewhere. Yahoo! and Plaxo were the first widely available showcase of OpenID 2.0 in action, we were the first large user of their new Address Book API, and we were the first to experiment with them adding profile portability on top of their OpenID flow. And today we're taking another giant step forward!

Starting today, we're beginning the roll out of a new experiment with Yahoo! for "hybrid OpenID+OAuth signup" to Plaxo. This approach is both more powerful, and more user-friendly than anything we've done so far together. It's more powerful because a Yahoo! user can not only sign up for Plaxo using their existing Yahoo! account (no new Plaxo-specific password or lengthy signup flow required), in the same act they can now share access to their profile, contacts, and updates stream, allowing persistent and 2-way flows of their important social data. This means they can quickly become a power-user of Plaxo, and the bridge they've built will allow future updates on either Yahoo! or Plaxo to flow in both directions--as always, in accordance with the user's wishes. And it's more user-friendly because Yahoo! has incorporated the latest "Open Stack user experience" research into their design--using a friendly, light-weight popup that clearly shows the user what they're being asked to share.

As usual, we'll start presenting this new flow to a small sample of new Yahoo! users who come to join Plaxo, and we'll report on the results as soon as they become clear. Our "hybrid signup" experiments with Google earlier this year produced the best results the industry had seen thus far, so of course we're very excited to see what we can do with Yahoo! This is further validation that open standards can give mainstream users greater control over their information and a greater ability to make the tools they use work well together. In fact, the vast majority of the code we built for use with Google was reusable without modification for Yahoo! And even though Yahoo! does not yet support Portable Contacts--the emerging standard for exchanging address book, friends list, and profile data--it was easy to transform the output of their API into this standard format, so it would "just work" with the infrastructure we already had.

Read the full story from Allen Tom at Yahoo! Developer Network Blog.

Here's what this new flow looks like to a Yahoo! user that was just invited to join Plaxo:

Selected Yahoo! users will see a custom invite landing page featuring express sign-up.

They can then sign in via a friendly popup (Plaxo never sees their password).

They can authenticate and share their profile and social data in a single click.

Plaxo can then help the user get connected without any additional friction.

Finally, they're shown how to sign in next time using their Yahoo! account.

Sharing news stories with your Plaxo network just got a lot easier with the rollout today of a new feed from the New York Times. If you’re a registered user of TimesPeople, it will only take you a second to hook it up (and if you’re not, it’s free and also just takes a second).

From then on, sharing a story you like couldn’t be easier. Whenever you read a New York Times piece that your want to share, just hit the “RECOMMEND” button next to the article. We’ll then deliver a link to the story, along with a headline, copy snippet, and thumbnail image to your profile and to the streams of all the people you want us to share it with. (Like with all feeds, there may be a slight delay before your story shows up.)

That’s right. No need to log in with your Plaxo credentials or search for a Plaxo logo on a page of sharing options. Just keep using TimesPeople like normal, and your recommended stories will also flow to your Plaxo connections.

This is a great example of Activity Streams going mainstream, connecting users of a professional-oriented social network with one of the most venerable news properties in the world. And best of all, it was built on top of open APIs—anyone could use the TimesPeople APIs and RSS feeds to build a similar integration, and nothing stops users from sharing their recommended stories into multiple sites at once, since the syndication is all done behind the scenes.

So give it a try, and let us know what you think. Browsing NYTimes.com has long been a part of my morning routine, and I often find stories I want to share with my friends or colleagues. Now I don’t have to think about which services to share on, whether I happen to be logged in, and where that service-specific sharing button has gone, I just click “Recommend” and let the Social Web do the rest!

Update: The New York Times covers our integration (on their Open blog)!

As an industry, we are collectively transitioning from the walled garden phase of social networking to an era characterized by openness and interoperability between social websites. In recent months, we’ve shown how much better things can be when websites work well together, while keeping the user in control. Now, we’re laying the foundation to enable even more interoperability later this year, this time between Plaxo and some of the other Websites within the Comcast Interactive Media (CIM) family.

Just as today we allow folks to sign up and sign in to Plaxo using identities from external websites, later this year we will allow you to sign up or sign in to Plaxo with an identity from other specified Comcast Websites. To do that, we are taking steps now to create a unified Terms of Service and Privacy Policy for the participating CIM Websites, including Plaxo, to provide consistent protection and to minimize complexity and confusion for our users.

The new Terms of Service and Privacy Policy will go into effect on October 6th, 2009. Those familiar with the details of our current terms and policies will find the new ones share many of the same core privacy principles and spirit of user control. We remain strongly committed to the notion that your data and content are yours (not ours). For more info, check out this posting from Comcast’s Chief Blogger, Scott McNulty.

Current Privacy Policy and ToS
Updated Privacy Policy and ToS

John McCrea
VP of Marketing

Ever since Plaxo launched in 2002, we’ve attracted a very professional user base. When we added Plaxo Pulse to the mix a little over two years ago, it was a bold bet that we could make some of social networking’s features relevant and useful to busy professionals.

Our bet proved to be a good one. Our new hybrid of social and business network grew rapidly from zero to tens of millions of members, and Plaxo.com became a fast-growing destination with highly engaged visitors, who built out their more professional, more dynamic profiles, connected with other professionals, hooked up feeds, and started updating their status and commenting on content in their stream.

And as this new network grew, its demographic stayed the same. The median age of users of Plaxo.com is 42, and we’ve got the highest percentage of C-level executives (over 23% of members!), compared with other leading business sites, including LinkedIn, the Wall Street Journal, and Business Week*. And perhaps more interesting, although about a quarter of our members also use LinkedIn, three-quarters of them do not**. These two facts together make Plaxo a very attractive place to go looking for experienced professionals not findable via other sources.

But what if you wanted to go searching for people in this untapped “C-level” network? Of course, if you knew the name of a specific person you were seeking, you could type it in to our people search box. Or you could explore the reach of your extended network via the recently introduced Company Navigator. But if you wanted to search for professionals who met some set of criteria, you were out of luck. Until now…

Introducing Advanced People Search, with the ability to find professionals based on any combination of keywords, company, title, and location!

…and, while we’re at it, introducing Plaxo Pro, our ultimate package of professional network “power tools,” including ProMail, available with a choice of monthly subscription plans.

Key features of Plaxo Pro:

ProMail. Once you find the right people, whether through Advanced People Search or your Company Navigator, you can use our all-new ProMail system to message them directly. ProMail dramatically increases relevance and response rates, while decreasing untargeted messages from people you don’t know. (As with other communications preferences, you can opt out of ProMail at any time.)

(Even more) Advanced People Search. Get more results and the ability to do reference searches.

Plaxo Pro also includes all the advanced address book features of Plaxo Premium, including Outlook Sync, the De-Duper, unlimited eCards, automated backup and recovery, 24/7 support, and more. Plus, we’ll remove the ads from your Plaxo Profile!

Whether you’re ready to upgrade to Plaxo Pro at the moment or not, you can check out Advanced People Search at no cost.

John McCrea
VP of Marketing

*Source: Private study by Nielsen @Plan, April 2009.
**Source: Comscore

Last month, we introduced Company Navigator, an interactive dashboard for your extended network. It allowed you to browse your connections and connections-of-connections, company by company.

It was really cool, but it was missing one critical killer feature: search. Search is truly essential for well-connected individuals like me, since my 600 direct connections bring my reach to 34,000 people, yielding 3,300 pages of Company Navigator to browse. :)

Minutes ago, we rolled out search in Company Navigator. Now, when you want to know, "Who do I know at Company X?" or "Who can help me get an intro into Company Y?", just type in the company name and go!

For example, I just typed in "Wells Fargo," and even though none of my direct connections work there, I see ten Plaxo members who are connections of my connections. The list includes three senior vice presidents and three vice presidents. And for each person, it shows which of my direct connections is connected to them (and who could easily provide me an intro if I asked).

And since those connections are in my smart address book, I could pick up the phone and call them, send them an email, or use any other contact info they have shared with me.

To check out the reach of your extended network, go to your Company Navigator.

Company Navigator is one of the free professional networking tools in the My Career suite.

We just launched a major revamp of Plaxo profiles, based on feedback from our most active users. The goal of the re-design was to give you a profile that is:

- More professional – with greater emphasis on work history and removal of religion and politics
- More dynamic – with higher visibility for stream of content you’re sharing from all over the Web
- More personal – giving more of the page’s “real estate” over to you.

Check out yours, and make sure it reflects the image you want to project to each of your key audiences. Use the new preview feature to see how your profile appears to the public, to other members you’re not connected to, and to your business network, your friends, and your family.

Here's how mine looks to my business connections:

Also, we’ve now built a bridge between profiles and address book. For the appropriate profiles, you’ll see an “in your address book” link, which slides down a little window into your address book, with contact info at a glance and an editable notes field.

Last, we’re really proud of the enhancements we made to public profiles. The new design gives you the ability to create a public presence that is professional in style, that has great search-engine-optimization, and that is truly public (not just a teaser to get visitors to sign up for or sign in to Plaxo).

We hope and believe the revamped profiles with do a better job of helping you:

- build and nurture your network
- stay up-to-date on the people important in your life and career, and
- connect you with the right people and opportunities.

If you haven’t gotten around to creating a presence on Plaxo, now is a great time, as we have also added a Profile Builder that makes creating a great dynamic and professional profile a snap!

The next time you sign into Plaxo, you’ll see we’ve added a “My Career” tab. Click on it, and you’ll find a free set of professional tools that will help you get more out of your investment in Plaxo (now and over time).

One of the most powerful of these new tools, the Company Navigator, an interactive dashboard for your extended network, just went live this afternoon. This unique tool enables you for the first time to see and navigate a company-based view into your first- and second-degree network (inclusive of your connections, their connections, and the people in your address book). Discover the reach of your network, company by company, sorted by how many people you know there (or by company name).

For Plaxo members in the U.S., the My Career tools also include Job Search, which can connect you to over 3 million career opportunities, and Social Job Listings, which turbo-charge job listings with the “social power” of the sharer’s network. These features are powered by SimplyHired, the largest job search engine, through a partnership we announced earlier this year.

Whether you’re looking for your next opportunity, looking to hire great talent, or just keen on strengthening your network, My Career has something for every professional. You’ll find tools to help you:

- Grow and nurture your professional network
- Build your personal brand
- Become more find-able
- Navigate your extended network
- Discover career opportunities
- Hire great talent

Investing in your professional network is always a good idea, but it is vitally important in an economic downturn. Now, with the My Career tools, it has never been easier to build up, nurture, and leverage yours. Get started now at www.plaxo.com/myCareer.

John McCrea
vp of marketing

At Plaxo, we believe we’re on the cusp of a major transformation – the biggest change to the Internet since the birth of the Web 15 years ago – as the Web goes social, and the Social Web goes open. For that dream to be realized, we need to address the pain currently associated with using multiple social websites. We need true interoperability and true data portability, with users in control.

Today, together with our friends at Facebook, we are excited to deliver on that promise, with the roll out of an integration of Facebook Connect that demonstrates an unprecedented level of interoperability between two social networks (while preserving fine-grained control of privacy).

For this first phase of our integration of Facebook Connect, we focused not on new user signup, but on making something that would rock for the millions of people who are already happy users of both Plaxo and Facebook. (In a recent survey of our most active users, we found that 60% of them were also active on Facebook – and they wished the two services would just work together.)

So what did we do for this large and growing core?

First, we decided to put an end to “Re-Friend Madness”.
Starting today, we will honor Facebook friendships on Plaxo (for anyone who wants us to). That means that you can leverage the friends list you’ve built up on Facebook to help you get more connected on Plaxo – without having to manually re-friend those people, one-at-a-time.

Second, we’re enabling two-way flows of content between the two services, leveraging new capabilities of the Facebook Platform
Now, you can feed the content you’re sharing on Facebook (such as photos, videos, links, and events) over to Plaxo for sharing to your friends here. In addition, you can sync your status updates between the two services (in either or both directions). And, when you share a link or post a review in Plaxo, you can also share it over to your friends on Facebook.

If that sounds good, you can activate Facebook Connect for your Plaxo account now.

Achieving this level of interoperability was not easy. It required lots of collaborative problem-solving between the teams at Plaxo and Facebook. From concept to launch, we were really impressed with the Facebook team’s unwavering focus on doing the right thing for the user and creating the best possible user experience.

We’re really excited about this integration. We think it’s going to be really good for our business and really good for Facebook’s business. More importantly, it’s going to be great for users.

What we’re launching today is really just the beginning. Soon, we’ll add the ability to sign up and sign in to Plaxo via Facebook Connect. And we’ll continue to collaborate with the team at Facebook on additional ways we can make our two services work well together.

We believe this is an historic day, one that marks the beginning of a new era for the Internet, characterized by an open and interoperable Social Web.

John McCrea and Joseph Smarr