Plaxo - Useful Utility or Potential Spam Alert?

Dexter

Ok, so I have gotten a few of these e-mails lately:

Please help me update my address book: I'm updating my address book. Please take a moment to update me with your latest contact info.

This is accompanied by an image of contact card (see below.)

Now, if you click on the Update or other links, you are taken to a website called Plaxo. I did some research, and it appears that Plaxo is the latest effort by the co-founder of Napster, Sean Parker.

According to Wired magazine, Plaxo is

a consumer-oriented tool to help end users "securely update, maintain and access" their contact lists, the free beta version of Plaxo integrates with Microsoft Outlook for Windows.

But...the company does not tell anyone how they plan to generate reveue, leading many to believe it will sell your information or spam you in some way. Parker insists otherwise:

"We don't plan to do anything with the data other than make it available in a permission-based way from one user to another," he said. "We're a conduit, and we've asserted no rights to that content."

Read the full story here.

So far, I have ignored these e-mails, much like the dreaded "6 degrees" e-mails I used to get on a regular basis.

Who thinks this Plaxo will simply be a free useful utility? Or will they hook you then charge you, aka the Microsoft Model? Or will joining this just be an open invitation for new piles of spam in your inbox?

Dexter...

Dexter

The Contact Card Image (red areas are where I have blocked out my personal info:

primesuspect

I've gotten these too. I delete them.

It just....."feels" wrong... I dunno. Call me a skeptic.

Dexter

Hmmm. I guess either nobody else has gotten these Plaxo requests, or nobody else cares

Thanks for your feedback Prime, that was my gut feeling too.

Cheers,