I receive email from Plaxo from time to time, all are upcoming birthday notifications. It’s not difficult to click delete in gmail, but today I started to wonder why I have not close the account. I started using Plaxo around 2004, trying very hard to avoid clicking the wrong button and spamming my whole contact list. It had some promises, but never become essential to me like LinkedIn had. When I logged in just now, my profile was still that of my previous job which was more than 2 years ago. That’s how long I have not logged in, and I think it’s time to let go.

Before I do the irreversible, I wanted to make sure I gave them their due. I have not been around for a while, may be they have been doing something great withing my knowing. So I looked at their blog to see the recent updates:

so I had to look at their blog for recent changes. 

• April’10 – Site redesigned, putting more focus on address book
• March’10 – Announced new CEO
• February’10 – Updated address book with better search, categorization
• September’09 – Sign into Plaxo with Yahoo account and 2-way sharing of Plaxo’s social thing (They called this Pulse) and Yahoo’s social thing (I don’t even know what they call this)
• August’09 – Updated search functionality to easier find the C-Suites
• August’09 – Announced search for company navigator

I use Google Contacts to manage my central contact list, and LinkedIn to maintain professional network. Admittedly, Plaxo might have come up with some new ideas before LinkedIn, but with the small number of users on their network (I don’t think the “Plaxo is Spam” label helped) it just doesn’t matter.

At least, they have made it very very straightforward to close your account. Log in -> go to Settings -> select close my account. This is unlike that other social network out there. Kudo to you. And Good Bye.