From the desk of the Privacy Officer�

Given the recent discussion on Plaxo�s Yahoo! Group, I'd like to take the opportunity to reiterate Plaxo's approach for identifying and handling potential abusers of the Plaxo Service. We've found our current approach to be successful in the past and we continue to refine and improve the process as time goes along.

I'd also like to provide a few comments to Plaxo members on proper Plaxo etiquette and usage. And finally, I'd like to provide a few suggestions on how you can help us to ensure the integrity of the Plaxo Service.

Plaxo Terms of Service:
Plaxo is intended for the personal usage of Plaxo members to update and maintain their address book information with known contacts and business associates. When a member joins Plaxo, they agree to the Plaxo Terms of Service, which in part states:

• You may not use the Software, Site or Services to send unsolicited, promotional mass electronic e-mail messages or notifications to one or more recipients or systems (known as "spamming"). Any promotional electronic messages, which are sent in an unsolicited manner to 10 or more recipients, or any series of unsolicited promotional electronic messages to a single user, will be considered as spamming. Spamming also includes (i) sending messages to distribution lists, newsgroup aliases, or group aliases, and (ii) sending messages to recipients who do not know you or who are unlikely to recognize you as a known contact.
• You may not use the Software, Site or Services to upload, post, e-mail, otherwise transmit, or post links to: (i) any unsolicited or unauthorized advertising or promotional materials; or (ii) content which is harmful, threatening, abusive, harassing, tortious, defamatory, vulgar, obscene, pornographic, libelous, invasive of privacy or publicity rights, hateful, or racially, sexually, ethnically or otherwise objectionable.

Identifying and Handling Abuse:
Our Abuse Department monitors and investigates the Plaxo activity of accounts that show characteristics of potential abuse, including aspects such as:

• exceptionally large number of contacts being managed,


• excessive number of Update Requests messages being sent,


• and significant number of abuse reports and/or opt-out responses being received.

When our Abuse Department receives an abuse report, we may temporarily disable the member's account while we further investigate. We may also attempt to contact the member in order to better determine the circumstances surrounding the abuse report. In many cases the abuse is unintentional or the result of the recipient forgetting how they may know the Plaxo member.

We may take steps to ensure the Plaxo member is unable to send further messages through Plaxo to the recipient filing the abuse report, as well as request on behalf of the recipient that they be removed from the Plaxo member's local address book. We may also send a friendly reminder to the Plaxo member regarding the proper usage and etiquette of Plaxo before reenabling their account. But should our investigation find an obvious violation of our Terms of Service, we will remove the user from Plaxo immediately.

Plaxo Etiquette and Usage:
In general, we recommend to all Plaxo members they only send Update Requests through Plaxo to contacts they truly know and wish to stay in touch with. Sending messages to recipients who are unlikely to recognize the Plaxo member as a known contact may be viewed as an unwelcomed intrusion by the recipients and lead them to filing an Abuse Report against the Plaxo member. A significant number of abuse reports for the same Plaxo member may result in the removal of the member from the Plaxo Service.

In addition, we also encourage members to personalize their Update Request messages before sending them to their contacts through Plaxo. As a rule of thumb, the message content included within Update Request messages may include some business reference or updated news. But this content should not change the tone of the message as to make it commercial in nature, nor overshadow the primary purpose of the Update Request message, which is to stay in touch with the contact.

Reporting Abuse:
Members and non-members can help to ensure the integrity of Plaxo by reporting suspected abuse to our Plaxo Abuse Department. Users may contact our Abuse Department at abuse@plaxo.com. All reports will be investigated and followed up on.

I hope this helps to provide a better understanding of Plaxo's position and approach. If you have any questions, comments, or suggestions regarding our policies, please let me know.

�til next time.

Stacy Martin
Plaxo Privacy Officer
privacy @t plaxo.com

We announced today that five partners have already signed up to Plaxo-enable their Web sites and applications using our SOAP API: ColSpace, Global Systems, Greenlight Wireless, ModoMail, and Trekmail. This means that our members can access their Plaxo address book, calendar, tasks, and notes from within these services. While we've focused so far on integrating with Outlook and Outlook Express, our goal is that your up-to-date Plaxo information should be available to you in all of your favorite apps. If you're interested in Plaxo-enabling your Web site or application, please contact us at partnerships@plaxo.com.

For those of you unfamiliar with web services, partners download our WSDL file which describes the services our API offers (e.g. fetching your address book, sending out an update request, adding a new calendar appointment). There are web service packs for most popular languages (e.g. Java, C++, PHP) that will translate the WSDL into local code, so when you Plaxo-enable your application, it looks like you're just calling your own subroutines to talk to Plaxo. Behind the scenes, those functions are generating XML which is passed up to our server. Our server looks up the data in the database and performs any necessary actions, then sends XML back as a response, which turns into the return values. Partners don't need to know any of those gory details though, they just call the functions and get the data.

For security, all API calls are made over SSL so the user's password and data are encrypted during transport. We authenticate both the partner and the Plaxo member, so no one can touch your account without your permission.

We look forward to a day when you only have to maintain a single address book and it follows you around everywhere you go. Our API is a step in that direction, and we're encouraged by the adoption we've had so far. Help us get the rest of the way there by Plaxo-enabling your own service or telling the company that provides it that you want access to your Plaxo data!

Thanks,
The Plaxo Team

From the desk of the Privacy Officer�

I previously noted David Coursey's article titled "Beware of 'Free' Service" where he touches on a number of his concerns regarding Plaxo and other services. Not less than two weeks later, David Coursey wrote a follow up commentary on Plaxo titled "Plaxo Reconsidered".

I mention it, not because David Coursey comes 180 degrees with Plaxo where he now recommends us. It's worth noting because I believe it illustrates the importance of companies like Plaxo to have an open communication and feedback loop with their user community and to fully embrace the user communication channels of today, including e-mail, user forums, and especially blogs.

Our business is based on trust. We realize that trust is not an entitlement, but rather must be continually earned. To build that trust, we are happy to answer any questions people might have regarding our service so we can quickly address any issues and continually improve our service.

I give David all the credit for taking us up on this offer. In his article, David talks about the recent meeting he had with folks from our Executive and Engineering teams. The meeting gave David a chance to ask his questions and Plaxo a chance to listen to his comments. In the end, we didn't agree on everything but it gave us a better user perspective and things to think about in order to better improve our service. I give David even greater credit for publicly changing his position on Plaxo after learning more about our business plan and our promising future.

While I can not promise everyone a face to face meeting, I can promise we will continue to strive to operate in an open and public fashion. But I also feel that open communications can not be solely based on the historical model of waiting for customers to contact Support. Mediums such as blogs, forums, and newsgroups have tremendously empowered users to express their comments and questions in their own specific ways. In order for a company to be successful today, I feel they must reach out to their users as much as possible.

At Plaxo, we've tried to be as proactive as we can in reaching out to users, whether they are Plaxo members or non-members. Of course we provide the ability for anyone to contact us at Support (support_@t_plaxo.com) or Privacy (privacy_@t_plaxo.com). But we also provide other venues to create a greater sense of community and responsiveness. We have our own fairly active User Forums as well as forum groups on both Yahoo! and Google.

But of course my favorite venues are blogs. Blogs, as a result of their ability to quickly publish and syndicate a person's thoughts and comments have shown to be extremely powerful. I've seen the downsides to blogs. For as much as blogs can inform, they can also misinform turning rumor into truth, and speculation into fact.

But I also see the upside. Blogs provide the ability for companies to feel the pulse of their userbase. They tell us what people think and how they feel. And most importantly, they allow for an open and public communications on issues that matter most to people. I can't think of a better way for a company to build trust than by reaching out and embracing this type of user community. My hope is that one day, company officials responding blog postings will be the norm and not the exception.

But as the example with David Coursey has shown, there's still much work to be done. We'll continue to strive to operate in an open and public fashion and allow people to decide for themselves about Plaxo. Hopefully, as occurred with David Coursey, we'll also continue to grow.... one recommendation at a time.

Feel free to share your thoughts with us.

'til next time,

Stacy Martin
Plaxo Privacy Officer
privacy @t plaxo.com