I’m rooting for Michael Arrington and Rick Segal in their sneering at Plaxo. I have a very simple and concrete rule: I never but never respond to any Plaxo request. I also get irritated that new contact information for the person who spams me is not front-and-center; half the time, I have no idea who these people are who are bugging me. So please, don’t bug me with Plaxo.
I’m not much happier about Linked-In and find it particularly irksome when people spamming their address book can’t be bothered even to type in their own message — who do they think they are, the Parents Television Council? I think it’s particularly nervy of people I’ve never met to ask me to declare them friends and I have yet to find a single worthwhile contact out of Linked-In, but I will at least throw a link to people I actually have done business with. But in both cases, I have the gnawing fear that I’m thrown into a transaction that neither player truly controls.
