Plaxo To Launch Facebook Killer
Plaxo is set to officially launch its new social networking tools, dubbed “Pulse,” on Monday, August 6th. With Pulse Plaxo would appear to be gunning for Facebook’s all-your-data-in-one-spot status. We looked at the beta version Pulse last month and found it a bit unstable, but one thing Plaxo has going for it that Facebook lacks is openness.
Plaxo will offer export options for all your data, contrasted with Facebook’s so-called API, which really amounts to sending your data on a one-way trip over the event horizon.
Other than the ability to export and use your data elsewhere, Plaxo’s new networking features closely mirror those of Facebook — you can add various data streams, such as blog posts, Flickr photos or Amazon Wishlists. Hopefully Plaxo will add more services before Monday’s launch.
Like Facebook you can then see your friends??? streams on the site and subscribe to their feeds.
But despite its openness Plaxo’s service is no panacea for those fed up with Facebook’s walled garden; the company is still dogged by its early reputation for spamming users and many will likely shun the new network on that basis alone.
Hopefully Plaxo has worked out some of the kinks in the beta version — the Google Calendar sync is still disabled after a number of users complained about losing data and there have been some other problems. Still, if those issues are solved, Plaxo could emerge as a serious contender to Facebook, particularly with more professional users turned off by Facebook’s youth-oriented approach and lack of export features.
