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I think Plaxo is probably the poster child for this strategy of growth through shameless spam.

• sunir 15y ago
  How successful is Plaxo, really? http://siteanalytics.compete.com/plaxo.com/ http://siteanalytics.compete.com/plaxo.com/ I think they had their greatest moment when Joseph Smarr negotiated the OpenID+OAuth hybrid protocol with Google. Google subsequently poached him. They don't seem to have any other aces up their sleeves to survive.
  • gyardley 15y ago
    Didn't Plaxo already get bought by Comcast for +$100MM, or am I thinking of some other company? There's 'make the world a better place' successful, there's 'make something people want' successful, but there's also 'make some cash for yourself and your investors' successful. Sometimes invite spam can get you that last type of successful, which is why we'll keep seeing it.
  • lurker19 15y ago
    Plaxo is a software tool suite, not a media website, so Site Analytics does not say much interesting about their business.
• lurker19 15y ago
  To be fair, Plaxo's core value proposition is in address book management, so it is in each user's interest to convince their contacts to join. That said, I do have dim memories of Plaxo spam from around 2005, which postponed my Plaxo registration until 2007ish when I found they have the best (only?) Mac AddressBook integration, in the stone age before Google/Gmail took overrun the world.