I’m another recent Plaxo hire…I joined two weeks ago to lead Plaxo’s Globalization effort. It’s time for us to expand our international presence and show our international members that we really care about them.

It may seem weird to say we want to increase international presence when we already have members in over 83 countries and about 30% of our members come from outside of the US. The 12 countries with the largest Plaxo membership are:

1. United Kingdom
2. Australia
3. Canada
4. Brazil
5. South Africa
6. Netherlands
7. Germany
8. France
9. Mexico
10. New Zealand
11. Italy
12. India

Did you notice the same thing I did when I first saw it? Seven of these are either English speaking countries or countries where people speak English well and feel comfortable using it. We have nothing against our English speaking members; in fact, we love them. But one of our goals in 2006 is to enhance the user experience of our non-English speaking members and show the world what a smart address book can do.

Judging from visits to our site and search trends, folks around the world are taking notice. According to Google Analytics and Google Trends.

There is definitely a correspondence to our overall international membership numbers, and also a noticeable absence of Asian countries.

Back to Globalization; we are working to consider international users’ needs from design to development to localization to support. Yes, we are going to localize Plaxo! We'll start with a few languages, with many more to follow. Can’t talk about dates yet, after all I’ve just started!

I’ve made a career of Globalization and am really passionate about it. If you are an international Plaxo member and have comments or suggestions, I'd love to hear from you. Please post here or email me directly.

-- Regina Bustamante, Director of Globalization

I’m the 7-day-old Director of Product Management at Plaxo. I've blogged a total of 67 words in my life - and not because of lack of opportunity. But these Plaxo guys believe strongly in transparency- so here we are.

Starting a new job is a little like starting to use a new application: You've heard some good things about it, some bad things about it, but you've decided it’s got something for you - so you take the plunge.

Four months ago, all I knew about Plaxo were the emails I had received (need I say more?). Then I learned while doing some peripheral investigation that it could free my Outlook data from my work computer so that I could see it from my home computer – or anywhere for that matter. I quickly downloaded Plaxo.
That night - I went home, logged into Plaxo Online, and saw my calendar and contacts (13 years worth from my now-previous work) now available to me without lugging and logging into my work laptop. WOW. Next I downloaded the toolbar for my home machine where my husband uses Outlook Express. Now all our contacts were in one place, and we created a calendar with the kids’ schedules. My life is now less split – if you know what I mean.

By coincidence, Plaxo came up as a career consideration. PERFECT. A product manager's dream: a great product, all kinds of opportunity for more functionality, as well as room for improvement ;-). After what seemed like 60 interviews (actually 12 - these guys are careful), things were looking good. In addition to the functionality, and the promise for MORE, and more better, the team met my criteria. They are very technically progressive, completely up-for-improvement, even if it means change, and basically, passionate about doing great things right. They also meet the bill in abilities: opinionated rocket scientists and inclined to move (VERY) fast. They even passed the good-time-over-lunch test.

So here I am.

Back to where I started - Starting a new job is a little like starting to use a new application…

When I started using Plaxo, I was confused - and anxious. I loved the synch and the access. But I was terribly worried: will this email my friends? Or worse yet, my old boyfriends? (The answer is no.) I worry. And finally – after years of perfecting my ability to worry – I am getting paid for it.

The Plaxo team is in the middle of an overhaul of sorts, and the office is talking about my old boyfriends (or those potential emails, to be more precise). I can’t wait to unveil the many exciting things we have coming out later this year – the worry free – only great value – Plaxo. (Note – I’m not in marketing)

As it probably goes without saying, I’m still using Plaxo. I love seeing my kids’ soccer schedule right next to my work schedule, and ALL my current contact info across all my applications. I can’t wait to do more. My usage patterns, fears and confusion are the subject of well deserved scrutiny around here. And soon – not only will I not need to worry, but I’ll actually stop worrying – at which time I’ll have to find something else for them to pay me for.

Heck – I may be so excited I’ll want to let my old boyfriends know… but I doubt it.

-- Laurel Lee, Director of Product Management

Answer: HipCal (www.hipcal.com).

Plaxo announced today the acquisition of HipCal, LLC, based in Troy, NY. You can read the formal press release at: Plaxo's website. However, I wanted to give you an insider's view of why we joined forces with these young guns from upstate New York.

You'll have to read the entire article to find out what we both have in common with pimps. ;-)

Plaxo has a calendar?

You may not know this, but Plaxo has had an online calendar for some time. Yup, we really do. As a matter of fact, we were using AJAX techniques two years ago before it was called AJAX (RSI thanks to Terry Chay and Joseph Smarr).

But, to be really honest, we did not put the same amount of effort and resources on our calendar as we did on everything else. Our users have been asking us to do for calendars what we did for address books--not just make them available everywhere, but make them easy to coordinate with friends, colleagues, and customers. This has been bothering us for awhile and it's one of those things that we put into the "someday" category. Well, this is that day.

Exploding calendars

So, it all started while we were watching with amusement as startup after startup announced their jump into the "new, Web 2.0 calendar" space -- the list is long. But, one of them caught our eye, HipCal (and apparently the Web 2.0 Awards and SXSW festival's eye too). I should mention that a few of the others look quite impressive as well -- 30 boxes also appears to stand our from the crowd.

Note that a good friend of mine, Mark Fletcher (ONElist, eGroups, Plaxo, Bloglines), says "Whenever you have more than one funded company in the calendar space, you know you are in the bubble." :-)

Anyway, back to the story...

So, the first thing that we noticed was that www.hipcal.com was extremely fast and simple. The design had a natural ease about it that appealed to everyone here and it was extremely snappy. The second thing that we noticed was that the team was very engaged and dedicated to their users, even though they had classes to attend at school (RPI)!

Garret Heaton

So, on a whim, I sent Garret Heaton, [the guy who started it as part of school project], a simple email: "Hey, love your site. Interested in talking about working together?" Garret replied fairly quickly with enthusiasm and we got started.

A few days later, during a conference call with the HipCal guys (all five of them), we quickly got into a discussion about joining Plaxo. And, at some point during the conversation, I said: "Think about it this way. Would you rather be in Troy, New York, in three feet of snow, working out of your parents' garage OR would you rather be sitting in a nice house on the beach in sunny California with all the beer you can drink and parties every night." After about about 15 seconds of silence--in which I was thinking that I made a huge tactical mistake--the other end of the phone burst into laughter and the group screaming "we like the second option better!" :-)

So, we flew the guys out to California, but had some trouble with the car rental since most car agencies require the driver to be 25 or over. Once we cleared that up, we got down to business. By the end of the day, we all realized that this was meant to be (i.e. they are five amazing, talented, and nice guys) and left us with a great feeling.

That was easy, now for the hard part

We signed the deal a few weeks later and have been making plans for a new calendar ever since. The guys will be moving to California in June. [Note: I failed to mention that buying a home on the California coast would cost a small fortune. ;-] The guys will be looking for a house to rent in Mountain View/Palo Alto very soon -- let me know if you have any leads.

Stay tuned for the big changes coming from Plaxo's new calendar team.

btw: The original name of HipCal was MyPIMP.com. And, in case you didn't know, "PIM" is a common acronym for Personal Information Manager.

Garret Heaton, Tawheed Kader, Pete Curley, Glenn Dixon, and Chris Rivers

More photos of the HipCal guys

Here's a photo of Pete Curley. We haven't figured out what he does yet, but we know that it has somethng to do with refilling the kegs. Oh, and Pete designed the cute little hippo on the HipCal site.

Here's a photo of Chris ("Silent Chris") Rivers. He's generally ....., um, er, ..... silent. But, once you get a few margaritas into him, watch out because he turns into "Crazy Chris"! He is rumored to have a very large shoe collection.

Here's a photo of Glenn Dixon. When we first met, I thought that he was "Silent Chris" and kept wondering "he talks a lot, I wonder why they call him Silent Chris...?" Glenn just recently got out of prison, but don't let his tatoos and rough exterior fool you... he's a teddy bear on the inside.

Here's a photo of Tawheed ("Wheed") Kader. He's sorta like the George Harrison of the HipCal group. [Not really sure what I meant by that, but it sounded good when I wrote it.] We don't understand what his nickname means yet, but he sure seems excited about moving to California.

UPDATE: Looks like we've got some initial reactions coming in :)

• Om Malik
• Techcrunch
• Red Herring

I am excited to join Plaxo as the company’s first vice president of marketing. I hope that is auspicious that on the day we announced my joining (yesterday), we also marked a more significant milestone – 10 million registered users of the service. And as important as that number is (given that Plaxo’s utility is directly linked to the size of our user base), for me it pales in comparison to the dramatic shape of the underlying growth curve that brought us to that mark.

As the chart below shows, we are now beginning to experience the “knee” of our exponential growth curve.

I’ve been thinking a lot about exponential growth curves of late, inspired by Ray Kurzweil’s latest book, “The Singularity is Near”.

I won’t try to explain the book here (though I will make the aside that I highly recommend this book.) But there is one of Kurzweil’s key premises I will comment on, namely that people – even very smart, well educated people – are lousy at understanding the implications of exponential curves. We tend to be linear in our thinking about the future, assuming that the next five years will be reasonably similar to the past five years. Such thinking greatly underestimates the pace of progress when the driver of change is something that is doubling every twelve or so months.

In this, my first post to the Plaxo blog, I’ll stop short of making a Kurzweil-like bold prediction for Plaxo’s future. I will say, however, that I think I am in for a very exciting ride. And it’s a ride I look forward to sharing with you, the Plaxo community.

To that end, one my key goals is to help Plaxo do a better job of explaining who we are, what our offerings do – and what they don’t do. In short, to achieve much greater transparency. To that end, I encourage you correspond directly with me or to post your questions or comments.

It has been a little more than two months since I joined the talented team at Plaxo as their new CEO. Not surprisingly, it�s been something of a whirlwind. I feel as if I�m already at least two years behind on my e-mail.

Before I started the job, my wife gave me a book written specifically for new CEOs. I forget the exact title (the book itself is now in the seat pocket of an airplane somewhere over the Midwest), but it was something like, �How to Avoid Screwing Up in Your First 90 Days.� One of the book�s primary recommendations was to spend as much of the first few months as possible listening. In particular, the authors recommended that new leaders exploit the temporary luxury of uncluttered calendars and unbiased ears to speak with as many customers, employees, fans, and critics as possible.

I have tried to take that lesson to heart. Here�s what I�ve learned after two months of listening:

• Plaxo�s members are an incredibly diverse group. They represent over 85 countries, and they span the gamut from college students to senior citizens.


• While we have a heavy concentration of subscribers in �client-centric� positions (e.g. sales executives, small business people, financial planners, and real estate agents), we�ve also attracted loyal followings among brides-to-be, administrative assistants, ministers, and large numbers of non-profit organizations. Our members have�not surprisingly�quite different requirements for the service.


• People who have been using Plaxo for a month or more tend to be happy with the product. Our mean customers satisfaction ratings are above 4.2�out of a maximum score of 5.0�on all major criteria.


• However, we have a long way to go to make the initial experience better for our users. In particular, we need to do a better job of explaining the service to first time users.


• Die-hard Mac users want a Mac version. Die-hard Mozilla fans want a Thunderbird Version. (We�re working on it�more in a subsequent posting.)


• About 40% of Plaxo subscribers leverage the service to access their address books and calendars from multiple different e-mail accounts, and now want to use Plaxo to access their address books and calendars on their mobile phones.


• We haven�t done a particularly good job of letting our subscribers know about some of our newer features (e.g. calendar synchronization, Plaxo signatures, "Click-to-Connect," etc.) Over 25% of our subscribers were unaware that these capabilities existed.


• Our birthday reminder service has been extremely useful in promoting domestic tranquility. Every day, we get a number of e-mails from people who say that we have �helped them stay out of hot water� by reminding them of a colleague, friend, significant other, mother-in-law, etc. who was about to have a birthday.


• An increasing number of people who are not Plaxo members are frustrated by the volume of Update Requests that they are receiving from Plaxo members. Rightly or wrongly, they perceive these requests as spam or�at best�an unwanted intrusion. We need to do a better job in enhancing their experience.


• In relation to the point above, we need to establish �Plaxo Manners.� Some of our members have gotten especially enthusiastic about using our product�to the point that they will send update requests to everyone for whom they have an e-mail address, including people that they met three years ago at a conference and haven�t spoken to since. We need to do a better job of encouraging our subscribers to be thoughtful about their update requests.


• In relation to the point above, there are certain categories of people (celebrities, well-known journalists) who already feel too connected, and are not looking to let even more people connect to them. For those people, we offer the ability to block Plaxo requests, but could probably do more. While I know that we could keep Paris Hilton�s address book secure, she might nevertheless find herself receiving lots of requests from people who want to be in her address book and/or felt offended that they didn�t rate as high as Ashlee Simpson or Eminem.

Beyond the practical applications of Plaxo, it appears to serve some very basic social needs as well. One subscriber wrote that Plaxo �helped fulfill a New Year�s Resolution to stay organized and do a better job of staying in touch with the people [they] cared about.� We�re thrilled about this. On the other hand, this same person wanted us to come up with a solution to help with their other New Year�s Resolution�to lose 5 pounds. We�re not quite sure how to help with that.

In short, we�ve made some great progress. However, we still have a lot of work to do. Whether you are a satisfied customer, a skeptical non-user, or something in between�I�d love to hear from you and get your suggestions.

The final two things that I�ve learned in the past two months:

• I owe an enormous debt of gratitude to the three people who ran the company before I got here (Rikk Carey, Todd Masonis, and Cameron Ring). They�and the whole team�got the foundations of the company right.


• It takes far fewer than 90 days for a new CEO to mess up.

Ben Golub
CEO
Plaxo, Inc.

Discuss this post on our forums

Mark Jen here. I�ve just joined the Plaxo team and one of the first things I�m getting involved in is our blog. I�m super excited about the products we�re building here; keeping my contacts up to date has always been a daunting task. Now, Plaxo makes it almost effortless!

Hopefully, through this blog, we can continue to give you a transparent view of how we operate. Plaxo definitely recognizes the importance of connecting with the community � we want to hear your feedback and provide you with the best services possible. If you�d like to give me feedback directly about our products or this blog, feel free to e-mail me at mark @t plaxo.com.