Plaxo is now fully integrated with FriendConnect--Google's widget-based tool for socially enabling any web site. This means on any site running FriendConnect, you can now securely connect your Plaxo account, see which of your contacts are also on that site, and invite any of your contacts to join that site. And, perhaps coolest of all, you can choose to have any activities you share on that site flow back into Pulse, so your Plaxo connections can keep in touch with you across the web and discover new sites you've found.
This is a truly useful and exciting integration--it's the closest we've come yet to a seamless social web ecosystem, in which users can take their identity and relationships with them across the web, find the people they know at a new site, and share activity back with their existing contacts, creating a virtuous cycle of more social discovery and sharing. This is how the social web should work--rather than having to start from scratch every time you try a new social site (which is still the norm for most sites today), each new experience you have should enrich the others.
This only works when services give their users control over their data and provide them with secure access using open standards. And that's exactly what Plaxo is doing with FriendConnect. When you connect your Plaxo account, we're using OAuth so you don't have to give out your Plaxo password, and you can always choose to revoke access later. And when you share activity from FriendConnect back into Pulse, we're using the OpenSocial 0.8 RESTful Activites API. The only custom integration right now is with our address book API, and we're already working with the community to develop an open standard for that piece of the puzzle too. We firmly believe that acting as an Identity Provider, Social Graph Provider, and Content Aggregator--that is, letting our users take their data and relationships with them across the web and share data back from anywhere--is good for users, good for Plaxo, and good for the Web. And we're just getting started--stay tuned for additional enhancements, including more fine-grained control over which of your family, friends, and business network you want to connect with on other sites, and who you want to see your shared activity from FriendConnect sites!
Here are some screen shots of Plaxo's integration with Google FriendConnect--or you can experience it for yourself on any FriendConnect-powered site.
This morning, Yahoo! announced the public availability of its Address Book API, and we’re excited to announce that Plaxo is among the first sites with a live implementation. This new API has made it possible for us to re-launch a very popular feature – automated bi-directional address book sync between Yahoo! and Plaxo! (Wow! That’s a lot of exclamation points.)
This is another great move from Yahoo!, who has been showing real leadership in the area of data portability and opening up the Social Web. It follows on the heels of Yahoo! becoming an OpenID provider. (We were glad to be a launch partner for that, too.)
The next phase of the Web will be enabled by empowering users with control over their data, and the ability to let them use within the tools, services, and devices they choose. The Yahoo! Address Book API is a great step in that direction, giving users access to their address book data – and without having to give up their username and password to a third-party site. (And we're particularly excited to see Yahoo's continued commitment to supporting open standards; sounds like OAuth support is on the way!)
If you’re a Plaxo user and want to set up (or re-activate) sync with Yahoo!, here’s a post with the instructions.
Joseph Smarr
Chief Platform Architect
I'm happy to inform you that Yahoo sync is back, thanks to a new API just announced by Yahoo! It is now once again possible for you to turn on address book sync between Yahoo and Plaxo. To activate Yahoo address book sync go to:
http://www.plaxo.com/po3/?module=dashboard&operation=addSync&cid=Yahoo
And if you had this feature turned on at some time in the past, you can now re-activate that sync point. Just follow this simple process:
Step 1: Login into Plaxo and bring up your address book.
Step 2: Click on your Yahoo endpoint to initiate the re-authentication process.
A window will pop up where you can sign in to Yahoo, accept their terms of service, and authorize Plaxo to access your address book.
Step 3: Once the re-authentication process is completed, then you can trigger synchronization to Yahoo. Click on “Manage” to bring up the options lightbox.
Step 4: Inside the light box, click “Sync Now”.
If you have hundreds of contacts being synced from Plaxo to Yahoo, be aware that is can take up to twenty four hours before seeing your contacts appear in Yahoo for the first-time sync.
For everyone who has been eagerly awaiting for the return of this feature, thanks so much for your patience. I think you'll be pleased with the result, as the new Yahoo Address Book API will make sync a much more robust offering.
And of course, we're still not done. We're working harder than ever on new features to bring your address book to life.
--Mark Hashimoto, Server Engineer (and honorary technical yahoo by now!)