Today we introduced our “Connected Index,” which ranks countries by average size of address book. You can think of it as World Cup of address books. It’s based on what we’ve learned about how our over 10 million members are using Plaxo.
Before we ran the numbers, I had some guesses about what the results might be. I figured the U.S. would probably be near the top, but not in first place. I imagined English-speaking countries would dominate the top ten, since we have not yet localized the Plaxo service. Instead, the U.S. tied for 29th place with the Dominican Republic, and Argentina was the clear winner – with nearly a 100-person-per-address-book lead over second place Austria. And three other South American countries joined Argentina in the top ten (Venezuela, Brazil, and Chile)!
We intend to update the Connected Index from time to time, to see how things are evolving. We may also come out with variations, such as city rankings or red states versus blue states. Your suggestions are welcomed.
Here are the top ten countries from the first edition of the Index:
1. Argentina
2. Austria
3. South Korea
4. Italy
5. Venezuela
6. Germany
7. Switzerland
8. Brazil
9. Czech Republic
10. Chile
John McCrea
VP of Marketing
Update:
Starting to see some pickup of this story in the blogosphere. A nice piece by the always-insightful Mark Kellner of the Washington Times is here. He draws a parallel to the U.S. coming in sixth in broadband connectivity, and links to a post on that subject, here.
To me, it seems like the lack of localization is precisely why non-English speaking countries have done so well in this ranking. Only those people who REALLY need Plaxo's assistance will overlook the lack of native-language support. So the bigger the address book, the more likely someone will look for tools such as Plaxo, and overcome the obstacles to using it. The bigger the Address Book, the bigger the Address management nightmare, and therefore the bigger need for Plaxo.