When Plaxo introduced its new Pulse service, which aggregates information from competing social networks, Facebook banned Pulse beta testers.

Plaxo Pulse works by pulling information from multiple social networks. The company gives an example of putting aim screen names, Flickr photostreams, and address information all in one place.

But, when it comes to Facebook, e-mail addresses are served as images in the browser and the company provides no way to export that field using its APIs. To empower its Pulse service, Plaxo decided to use optical recognition software and that caught Facebook’s attention quickly.

“Facebook closed down Robert Scoble’s account when it found he had used an alpha version of a "screen scraper" utility from Plaxo, to gather his 5,000 contacts’ personal data, including email addresses and birthdays, for export to his Outlook and Plaxo contacts databases.” That’s according to ZDnet.

Plaxo’s goal seems to be gathering contact information and keeping it up-to-date so you don’t have to. It describes itself as a service company that “. . . keeps people connected by solving the common and frustrating problem of out-of-date contact information . . . Plaxo provides a free service that securely updates and maintains the information in your address book. Plaxo is the universal digital assistant; available to you wherever and whenever you need it to keep you organized, on top of your life and in touch with those you care about.”

The source of the trouble here is Facebook’s longstanding tendency to hoard contact information, making it difficult to export. And few take the time to read the terms of service.

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Entry was posted on Monday, January 7th, 2008 at 3:15 pm under Uncategorized.

Read more entries by Matt Jansen.
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