Unleashing Plaxo Hell

I did something this morning that falls into the category of ‘seemed like a good idea at the time’ but which upon reflection (or more accurately, upon understanding reality) falls into the category of “you dumb mother-fucker”. Put another way, I unleashed Plaxo on all my contacts this morning as I calmly sipped my first cup of coffee sitting comfortably in my pajamas at my kitchen island – oblivious to the hell I was setting free. I’ve been waiting years to do this, but something always held me back. I finally broke down and decided that I really did need to clean up my contact database (I keep a lot of contacts and its helpful to know what’s up to date and what’s not). So if you are in my contacts and I have your valid e-mail address, this morning you received a cheerful note from me asking you to update your information. THIS WAS NOT A GOOD IDEA. While I got some useful information back, there were some second order effects that I had not thought about. Here’s a few: 1)ont-size: 7pt; line-height: normal; font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal;”> I basically just spammed my entire contact list. I wasn’t really thinking about this as spam at the time, but that’s essentially what it was 2)ont-size: 7pt; line-height: normal; font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal;”> I got several hundred e-mails from Plaxo itself, clogging my inbox as people updated their information (fortunately Plaxo lists people in groups, so one notice would have 20 or 30 updates announcements in it – so I suppose it could have been even worse). 3)ont-size: 7pt; line-height: normal; font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal;”> I got a bunch of e-mails from people telling me they hate Plaxo (mostly because they don’t trust it) and then giving me their contact information in e-mail form (which I had to enter manually – pretty much what I was trying to avoid). 4)ont-size: 7pt; line-height: normal; font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal;”> Plaxo errantly sent some update requests to a few mailing lists that I’m on (and have permission to send to) – that was a bit embarrassing. 5)ont-size: 7pt; line-height: normal; font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal;”> I reached out and touched a lot of contacts at one time, which resulted in a lot of people reaching out and touching me – I now have about 30 ‘catch-up’ lunches/coffee/meetings scheduled over the next month as a result (don’t get me wrong – I’m happy to catch up with these people – just not all at once) 6)ont-size: 7pt; line-height: normal; font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal;”> I have a long list of contacts that couldn’t be reached. While this is what I was looking for when I set out on my Plaxo mission this morning, seeing them all listed out makes me wonder exactly what I though I was planning on doing with all this information in the first place (perhaps ignorance really is bliss) What I should have done was install the program and not sent out the update request (Plaxo has a reasonably nice way to manage your contacts as e-mails come in) – this would have gotten me about 98% of what I now realize I was looking for without any of the annoyance.

To everyone I Plaxo’d today –
sorry.

I’m an idiot.

I won’t do it again.