Pulse - My Shiny New Object

Last month I was completely underwhelmed by Pownce. If you've been under a Social Networking rock over the last little while, Pownce is a Twitter-like service which updates your social network about what you're doing, new links, new videos, etc. The appeal of Pownce WASN'T the service itself - it was the invite process. Everyone wanted to get an invite, then dangle it over their friends who, in turn, did the same to their friends. While the viral effect on Pownce was phenomenal, the reality is that it still isn't really USED by as many people as Twitter and a new word was born on the Internet - Invite Fatigue.

Over the last few weeks ANOTHER new networking service was announced. Pulse, presented WITHIN an already well established (read: old) service on the Internet - Plaxo. The majority of early adopters have brushed it aside. "I've had Plaxo for years.", "I already have too many social networks" or, more usually, "I'll play around with it sometime soon" are the usual responses or comments. Over the past few days I've given Pulse a REALLY good look and am shocked. This ISN'T just another ho-hum service. This one almost changes the rules the way Twitter did.

Yes, it is that good!

Let me explain. When people "network" in the real world, the objective is to make contact for either two reasons: social relationships or professional relationships. On the social relationship side, the Internet has played a role with familiar names such as MySpace and Facebook. On the professional relationship side, the big player has been LinkedIn and lately encroached by Facebook. Plaxo's role in networking has been to act as a central database or hub of everyone's address book (be it Outlook, PDA device, etc.). It's "cool factor" came when you changed your address or phone number, Plaxo would change it for you in everyone else's own personal address book without sending a single "Here's my new address" e-mail.

The Pulse service recently added to Plaxo acknowledges what REALLY needs be done if you want to use one of these social networking sites to do REAL HUMAN NETWORKING is to connect real people in your address book with online social networking services already in existence with a RSS feed. This includes blogs, bookmarks (del.icio.us), photos (Flickr) and online status indicators (Twitter, Jaiku, Pownce, etc.).

This totally turned the little light bulb on in my head - something which hasn't happened until I "understood" the potential of Twitter.

Let's say I have a contact. Her name is Svetlana, the editor of Profy. I have Svetlana in my Outlook address book. My Outlook synchronizes with Plaxo so everything I have entered will be repeated online. Now, Svetlana is VERY active on the Internet. She blogs, bookmarks, Twitters and adds photos to her Flickr stream. It so happens Svetlana is also on Plaxo and these services are all acknowledged. Like the Facebook mini-feed, I can see who Svetlana connects with, what her latest Twits are, blog posts are, bookmarks, all her online life is easily seen in the Pulse stream, along with all MY other contacts which I've already connected with YEARS ago.

This makes so much more sense to me than even the "walled garden" of Facebook.

The system still is not perfect though. This new Pulse stream does not have an RSS feed which would be very useful to see in other areas such as Google Reader or a mobile feed reader. Also, the biggest drawback of these "connections", like LinkedIn, is that you can't delete them. That's not good. I have always hated the fact if a person really is no longer part of my network, I can't delete them out of LinkedIn. If Plaxo wants to really compete against the LinkedIn service, they should do something about this.

I strongly suggest to give Plaxo's Pulse a try. No you do NOT have to upgrade to the Premium Plaxo service to use it. No, don't ask me for an invite. You really don't need one to get in. Isn't that the way it SHOULD BE?