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Remember the rumor back in February that Google was buying Plaxo for $200 million? Well, for the most part, it turned out to be a trumor.  However, instead of Google making the purchase, it turns out that Comcast is doing the buying. The cable company plans to utilize Plaxo to deliver upcoming social-networking features currently in the works for their TV, Internet, and phone service. Plaxo will be used to bridge all three Comcast services together, linking devices such as TVs, DVRs, and wireless devices. The terms of the deal have not yet been disclosed, but the two companies have already been working together in developing SmartZone, an online portal available to millions of Comcast broadband and phone customers that provides easy access to several communications tools (e.g., email and voicemail)—all in one place.

Plaxo was founded in 2001 with an original premise of keeping users’ address books updated by automatically sharing data among friends. With the emergence of social networking sites, the start up company now offers capabilities to keep in touch with family and friends by sharing photos, videos, and messages. According to the Plaxo blog:

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Plaxo, the online contact management service is rumored to be getting purchased by none other than Google. The deal is said to be sub-$200 million, but details are still lacking, recently a Plaxo representative declined comment stating that the company does not allow for comments based on rumor.

You may want to head on over to Plaxo and grab an account just in case this rumor does turn out to be true, remember based on Google’s previous purchase history a lot of their newly acquired company’s close their enrollment shortly after the deal is closed.

Via [Wired]

ZYB is a free online phone data backup service, allowing you to store, manage, share and access mobile data online. ZYB supports over 300 phones across all networks letting you:

• Backup your mobile’s contacts and calendar


• Manage your mobile’s contacts and calendar online


• Share contacts and calendar with friends and family


• Import public calendars to mobile (Google Calendar import has just been launched, whereas full two-way synchronization between ZYB and Google Calendar will be introduced later)


• Synchronize your mobile’s data with other devices and services (iPod, Outlook and others)

Unlike Yahoo Mobile and Plaxo, ZYB uses open standard and is completely free (for now—we all know good things don’t always last forever).

Keep posted for more extensive feedback on the service (or let us know if you have used it).

Read [ZYB]

Love Plaxo but hate those annoying, “Hi, I’m updating my address book. Please take a moment to update your latest contact information...” Yeah, same here.

For three years, this was a key part of the Plaxo service as millions of people have used the update tool to quickly and easily control of their address books. But as of a a few weeks ago, you should start seeing fewer and fewer of these e-mails, as Plaxo shifted product functionality away from address book update.

The original idea and vision seems pretty simple: I maintain my own contact information, and when I change it, it automatically updates in my friends’ address books. Similarly, when my friends update their information, it changes in my address book. If Plaxo would plug in to Outlook and other popular address books, for maximum convenience.

Until large numbers of people started using Plaxo, automatic updating wouldn’t provide much value.

Management therefore came up with a model where people could still find value in using our service without there being a large network. I could download Plaxo and in a few steps e-mail contacts asking them for their up-to-date information. Then, usually within a few days my contacts would respond and my address would be updated. Some of my contacts would see this as a valuable service, and also start using Plaxo. In doing so, they would introduce Plaxo to more of their friends, but the real magic happened when they became members—because from that point forward they would no longer send out Plaxo update requests—everything would just happen automatically.

As of last week, we’ve past 10 million members. We are now growing at over 50,000 users a day. Due to this great growth, the depth of our network, plus our heartfelt desire to be good net citizens, we have started phasing out update requests.

Via [Loose Wire]
Read [Plaxo Blog]