do you care about the users you purchased?

05/15/2008 02:03:10 PM
Comcast just went out and purchased Plaxo for $170 million, so the big communications giant can integrate some social networky type feature.

Of course, Plaxo has a few loyal users who are more than a little upset at the news.

Here's one.

"I think the consensus is "what a shame." How is this positive at all? Plaxo is getting absorbed by a big comms player. Imagine how people feel if Microsoft subsumed Facebook. Social-oriented sites cultivate customers who start to trust them When one gets acquired by a big comms player, the initial reaction is "I don't want that company's paws on my data." And now you can't guarantee that. All the work -- Pulse -- to free up siloed e-mail contacts is for naught, no?"

This creates all kind of interesting strategic questions.

Could this group of loyal users contaminate the water for Comcast and make gaining traction difficult?

Should they do something and keep them happy?

Should they even care, knowing this is all about scale and buying an application that can take them places and to people who have never even heard of Facebook.

The problem is that in a 2.0 world, these users can make life rather difficult. They are already "educating" people about concerns with Comcast and private data. It's a tough call and going to very difficult for Comcast to deal with.


Posted by Ed Cotton
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