Legal Marketing & PR

Law Firm Marketers Shudder as Comcast Aquires Plaxo

By Larry Bodine, Esq.

Plaxo, one of the also-rans in the world on online social networking, has agreed to be bought by an Internet company known for lousy service and poor technical support: Comcast.  Speaking as a Comcast phone, Internet and cable subscriber, here's what you're in for:

• Endless waits on hold, only to have Comcast hang up on you.
• Tech support people for business customers who say they don't support Outlook email, only Outlook Express.
• High charges for business-class services, connected to an office that closes at 5 PM.
• Unreliable equipment that abruptly stops working. Don't bother calling tech support because they'll tell you to unplug their equipment, stare into space for 1 to 3 minutes, and plug everything back in.
• A voice mail maze where you have to press phone buttons repeatedly to do something simple -- like change the number of rings before voice mail picks up -- only to have the recording at the end tell you the change must be made on the Web. Then you go to the Web, complete detailed online forms to get a pin, and the last screen says you have to call a toll free number.

My heart goes out to Plaxo "Pulse" users.

A Letter from the CEO and Founders

We are excited to announce some of the biggest news in the history of Plaxo. Plaxo has signed a definitive agreement to be acquired by Comcast, the nation's leading provider of entertainment, information and communications products and services. We've got at least a few months to go before the acquisition is completed, but we wanted to send you this note to let you know what's coming up and how it affects you and your account.

Plaxo will remain an independent brand, organization and entity. We've been busy at work on our networked address book service and our next-generation social network, Pulse (if it's been a while, please come back and check out all the new features). And, through additional projects with Comcast, we'll be able to take these services to a lot more users and places than we could on our own... including the TV, phone and more.

If you'd like to read more about some of the great new things we're planning, please read our official announcement.

Full post as published by Larry Bodine's LawMarketing Blog on May 21, 2008 (boomark / email).