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.