[Infowarrior] - Plaxo reportedly for sale

[Richard Forno]

January 3, 2008
Social Net Site Is Said to Be for Sale
By ANDREW ROSS SORKIN

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/03/technology/03plaxo.html?pagewanted=print

Plaxo, an early social networking site that helps people keep their address
books updated, is up for auction, people briefed on the offering said
Wednesday night. The company, which has not made a profit, is seeking as
much as $100 million, these people said.

Plaxo, which has been overtaken by rivals like Linked In and Facebook, has
tried to reinvent itself as an aggregate of information from other social
networking sites.

In October, the company started Plaxo Pulse, a service that collects
information from Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, Digg and others, moving away
from Plaxo¹s original mission simply to keep electronic address books
up-to-date. Indeed, Plaxo¹s core business stirred some controversy because
it sent out millions of e-mail messages on behalf of its users, creating the
impression that the company was distributing spam.

The site then faced additional difficulties because some service providers
stopped allowing Plaxo to use their services. Plaxo says it has 15 million
registered users.

Plaxo was founded in 2001 by Todd Masonis along with a fellow Stanford
engineering student, Cameron Ring, and Sean Parker, who was also a founder
of Napster, the music downloading site.

The company has received more than $20 million in financing from venture
capital firms like Sequoia Capital, an early investor in Google, as well as
Globespan Capital Partners, Harbinger Venture Management and Cisco Systems.
Some individual investors, like Ram Shriram, a member of Google¹s board, and
Timothy A. Koogle, a former vice chairman of Yahoo, have also provided
financing.

Plaxo has hired Revolution Partners, a specialty investment bank, to handle
the auction, these people said Wednesday.