Social Net Site Is Said to Be for Sale: How can they ask $100 million for this?

Plaxo, an early social networking site that helps people keep their address books updated, is up for auction, people briefed on the offering said Wednesday night. The company, which has not made a profit, is seeking as much as $100 million, these people said.

It’s never made a profit, it sucks on top of that, and most people hate it. Yet they have the cohones to ask for $100 million. Why is that? Oh yeah, because they have the contact information of millions of people to barter with. Nice.

Shelfari: Invitations and updates: From the official Shelfari blog, posted yesterday.

We’ve seen the recent emergence of complaints about Shelfari’s invitations feature, and it’s quite distressing. […]

It’s been about five months since we last touched our invitation design. In June we looked at a number of different designs with the goal of creating something easy to use as well as clear. Recent feedback has been clear that our current design is not clear enough. As I read through the feedback, and look at the experience afresh, I can see where the problems stem from.

So, will they actually change the design? You know we’ll be watching.

As this soap opera unfolded, I was contacted by dozens of people who have had problems with Shelfari. In particular, the guy who created Library Thing (an admitted Shelfari competitor) wrote me and just posted this list of a stunning number of stories about people who have been burned by this.

Some of the stories are really sad:

After it sent out a second email today, I dove right back under the rock of humiliation, sank into the moat of despair and basically thought about changing my name and moving to Tahiti.

[…] Shelfari sent a bloomin’ email to every person I have ever emailed. Ex-boyfriends, people I hoped would never contact me again, coworkers, my vice-president, my CFO, my old boss, potential employers, my bishop, the entire Sunday school and relief society. EVERYONE. All now invited by spam to join my on-line book club.

[…] One hour after I pressed the button, Shelfari invited two dead people, one prisoner (he should probably read books but his warden is reading his mail), the CNN news desk, four European editors—and potentially a boatload of others who I hope I never meet.

[…] so then I got the bright idea to email an apology for the spam to my entire address book and Gmail decided that I’m a spammer and shut me down for 24 hours.

[…] That email went out to ex-boyfriends from ten years ago, their parents, high profile business professionals that I sent my resume to five years ago

So, did all of this cause Shelfari’s change of heart? I doubt it. Given the number of copy-and-pasted blog comments from “Danny,” they knew full well how much pain this was causing people.

In the process of my crusade, I discovered that Amazon was a big investor. I managed to acquire the email address of a highly-ranked contact in Amazon’s PR department, and I sent him a collection of choice links. So, did Amazon put any pressure on them? I don’t know — I never heard back. But you have to wonder.

Maybe they change their ways because my post entitled “Shelfari has Pissed Me Off” just hit the first page of Google results for “shelfari.” That must be embarrassing.

In the end, I refuse to pat Shelfari on the back or tell them they did the right thing here for the same reason Jay Allen refused to be nice to Plaxo when they changed their ways. The bottom line is this:

1. Shelfari should have known better from the start.
2. They are not changing this because they give a crap about you in any way. They are changing now because the disadvantages of their under-handedness suddenly outweigh the advantages. They acted like jerks for as long as it benefited them, and as soon as that plan was no longer viable, they crassly switched gears and tried to pretend it was because they cared about their users.

With this in mind, their punishment must continue. They have to be beaten over the head not until they just stop what they were doing, but until they regret ever doing it in the first place. In my mind, they need to be crucified in the blogosphere until it wasn’t worth it. We must negate the advantage.

So, at the risk of sounding bitter, screw Shelfari. I have canceled my account, and I encourage you to as well (go to Account Settings — the button is at the bottom of the page). If you accepted my inadvertent invitation that started all this, expect an email from me soon explaining what happened (for those who don’t read Gadgetopia).

If you like the idea of a social networking service centered around books, I encourage you to look at these two sites:

• LibraryThing
• Goodreads

NPR “Xeni Tech”: Jigsaw wants your data: This is a tricky little service that makes Plaxo look almost legit. If you upload someone’s contact information, you can search for and download someone else’s. So anyone who gives you a business card is currency for you to use to get someone else’s contact information.

Members pay $25/month to obtain 25 contacts from the site, or agree to put in 25 contacts a month to get 25 others out. Users maintain the data, but unlike Wikipedia, they don’t do it for love here — they do it to score points, so they can download more contacts.

Plaxo’s Personal Card: An Apology: We never liked Plaxo much and I doubt this will change our opinion, but it’s a start.

To everyone who hated getting Plaxo update messages, felt we were generating acquaintance spam, or otherwise were harmed by the service, I personally apologize on behalf of all of the people at Plaxo. I know we have a long way to go to earn your trust, and can only ask that you judge us by our actions going forward.

Dave posted about them some time ago, and they had some attack dog named Stacy Martin jump into the comments on that post in their defense. (Of course, it was less of a defense and more of an exercise in dissertation writing…)

Via Jay Allen who claims that this less an apology and more a strategy:

The problem that I have with this, however, is that they’ve decided to do it because they’ve achieved their ends and the costs of continuing to piss people off outweigh the loss of the en passant signups.

That to me isn’t a lesson learned. It’s a calculated business move.

A friend called me this morning saying that he got an e-mail message from someone he knew, but that message was apparently sent on his behalf by Plaxo. This friend was wondering what I knew about Plaxo, and whether he should respond to the message, which was asking him for all sorts of information he didn’t feel comfortable sending. Since I hadn’t heard of Plaxo before, I did a little research. Deane even has a post on it.

And the more I looked into it, the less I liked the whole concept.

Plaxo Contact Networks: Web sync for your Outlook and Outlook Express contact information. Getting raves from some, jeers from others. It’s like PayPal — it works best when everyone on Earth joins.