Plaxo's Personal Card - Latest Comments in Introducing “Social Job Listings” in Partnership with SimplyHired

Re: Introducing “Social Job Listings” in Partnership with SimplyHired

hpj — Sat, 08 Aug 2009 14:14:15 -0000

OPEN LETTER TO THE PRESIDENT:

Dear Ben and Executive Team

QUESTIONABLE PLAXO STRATEGY:
With your most recent strategic move to force users to pay for outlook synch, you chose a very unethic and bad strategy. This always was claimed to be free. Your strategy and behaviour is uncalculatable, unsustainable and untrustful.
Your customers will thank you this with their feet - and with very active and bad reference (you can find this already now in the forums).
I strongly recommend for you to rethink this bad and trust-abusing strategy, and return to the previous status. Then find a more customer oriented way on increasing your traction.
Starting today I personally will start searching for a powerful free alternative (there are several - but need to find the best), which will be broadly published in forums for users to get their outlook synched (more powerful than with Plaxo - hence incl. email synch. + more).
Should you stay with your strategy - i am confident your customerbase and business will experience continuous decline.

A BETTER WAY FORWARD FOR PLAXO:
I honestly wonder, how preoccupied the Plaxo Leadership Team is, after having started (before you (Ben) joined) so well.
Plaxo is trying to copy and compete the FBs, Linkedin's and XINGs of this world. This is a lost fight. It really is. I tell you as a severe power user of some of those communities.
But beeing focused so much on what you don't do well, you forget about Plaxo's true strengths and the reason why most users chose Plaxo.
Plaxo first and foremost is TECHNICAL CONNECTIVITY of social webapps, not SOCIAL CONNECTIVITY as such.
And on the TECHNICAL CONNECTIVITY - even though the Plaxo engineers did a great job - there is much more to do - and there are real payable service opportunities where you obviously haven't spent enough cyles to think about. I have thought of starting such an extended apps. synch. service (have not done it cause not connected to enough funds to do it powerful enough to win).
In fact my ideas and concepts were inspired by your product.
If you TECHNICALLY and in an automated fashion would CONNECT not only Outlook on different clients, but social community platforms as such in a consolidated fashion, you would create a set of value propositions to a number of target groups. Almost every active web-user would want to use Plaxo - and be happy to pay. Too strong the advantage to not have it.
There is more thought in this - let me know if you are interested.

(I will put this "open letter to the President" online in a number of forums in a week from now)

Kind regards
HPJ
(No-one from Plaxo had even responded to my letter - which I sent out to each individual of the leadership team - plus to the official Plaxo customer support - most obviously the Plaxo leadership has stopped innovating a long time ago - they simply wait their hold-periods until they can cash-in and then they're gone. Good luck Plaxo users, you're lost)

Re: Introducing “Social Job Listings” in Partnership with SimplyHired

Laurent J.V. Dubois — Mon, 09 Mar 2009 04:39:30 -0000

I understand the urgency for Plaxo to make some money,
but for that, perhaps can you fixe simple bugs and to focus on our existing members ...

Just a simple example :
in the template of the connections page, your Nerds have just to fixe this old link
http://www.plaxo.com/connec... with http://www.plaxo.com/connec...
A 5mn job for a 6 months old bug, but yes, not a geek job ...

So the main question is not about a small bug ...
but this new service for our Press annoncements and member acquisition operations ...
but are you able to focus on needs of your existing members ,
to make money with our existing services and knowlegde,or just a geek training center ?

yes it's certainly a stupid question ...

Best regards,

Re: Introducing “Social Job Listings” in Partnership with SimplyHired

Tina Langley — Sun, 08 Mar 2009 17:10:07 -0000

It's nice to hear that SOMEBODY'S hiring! I've been hearing nothing but doom and gloom out there.

Re: Introducing “Social Job Listings” in Partnership with SimplyHired

Jason Coles — Thu, 05 Mar 2009 15:45:50 -0000

This looks like a great service John, however not one that I am personally in need of but I will be sure to tell my friends and business colleagues about it.

I am in the process of re-launching my Atlanta, Georgia Web Design Firm so I have plenty of work ahead of me!

It is good to hear you guys are thriving through this recession, congratulations! Although a lot of other people are suffering it is good to hear about companies when they are doing well since the press just wants to talk about everything negative.

Jason D. Coles
3 Dogs Marketing