See for yourself...

If you don't believe me, the narrator in this video explains it all. Plaxo synchronizes all of your contacts. See for yourself...Check it out!

Personally...

Personally, I did not utilize all of the perks of Plaxo. But that's what I like about Plaxo--you can make it what you want it. If you want to use Plaxo solely for managing your personal or professional contacts, then that's fine. If you want to get all fancy and create an in-depth profile, you can do that. If you want to integrate your calendar into Plaxo, you can do that too. Quite frankly, my paper agenda works just fine for me, so I won't be using Plaxo's calendar, but I will use their site to manage my contacts online. Yes, I probably could have found another program that primarily focuses on providing an online address book, but Plaxo was the easiest to use, had the best reviews, and also offered more to those who want to take advantage of their extra perks!

So Much More than an Online Address Book

Plaxo is so much more than just an online address book. There is a tabs toolbar running horizontally across the mainpage, once you have signed in. In the toolbar are the following categories: Home, Address Book, Stream, More, and Plaxo Premium. I'll list what each tab entails.

• Home
• Importing Contacts
• Plaxo Stream
• People You May Know
• Recent Plaxo Activity
• Address Book 
• Search Contacts
• Browse: All Contacts, College Friends, Family
• Favorites
• (aka most often used contacts) 
• Stream
• Connection Updates
• Post Message
• Add Photos
• Share Link
•  **You can pick who you show what!
• More
• Calendar
• eCards
• Groups
• My Profile
• My Photos
• Plaxo Premium
• Upgrade Your Account

The Social Connecting Part of Plaxo

Yes, of course, you can socially connect on Plaxo, but you're not required to connect with other Plaxo users. Its more of a tool of convenience, especially at the Professional level, than for a social connection. For example, when I was creating my Plaxo profile, it asked me to list what colleges or high schools I have attended. Reluctantly, I completed this part of the profile and listed that I attended the University of North Carolina Wilmington for college and Rocky Mount Academy for high school. Ironically, using this tool, I found my neighbor and my dentist on Plaxo! My dentist was also a graduate of Rocky Mount Academy, hence the reason he showed up on my "people you may know" connection. Then I also found my neighbor and his son on Plaxo as well. I asked both my dentist and my neighbor to connect with me, but I don't think they're too active on their Plaxo anymore...I didn't get a timely response.

I can see where this can come into handy in the future after I've graduated from college. I'm not too consumed with keeping up with people from high school, but I do think it is important to maintain contacts with people from college, especially those within your same major or field. In the future when I am working in the health field, perhaps planning a Health Fair at a company as a part of a worksite wellness program, I may want to have a physical therapist or nutritionist be a guest....Plaxo can help me keep those contacts! I don't have to worry about losing a piece of paper with their information on it, I can update their change of address or phone number, and I know right where to find it when I need it! Then, I can also put them under my "college friends" but additionally link them into my professional contacts as well. Ah, convenience at its finest!

Plaxo Not Equal to Facebook

Clearly, I got a little excited about all of the mangaing contacts aspect of Plaxo that I didn't tell you how I signed-up for it and everything that goes into it. I went to http://www.plaxo.com/ and signed up for a free-trial. Little did I know that I was going to create a whole profile all about me that will help me find other people I may know. Yes, you're probably thinking, "This is just like Facebook," but you're totally wrong! Plaxo is MUCH more professional than Facebook. And, you make your Plaxo account and profile fit you, whereas you adjust your own interests to fit Facebook. Also, Facebook is much more of a social networking site that friends use to chat, post pictures, and keep in touch; you can do all of those things on Plaxo if you want, I guess, but it's more for managing your contacts all in one place. You can insert any or all contact information for a person into your address book on Plaxo, but on Facebook you have limited contact information of a person based on their privacy settings.

Checking Out Plaxo

I went to Plaxo's Main Webpage to check into their program a bit more. The Plaxo team speaks of their own program with the phrase "Finally, A Smart, Socially Connect Address Book." After creating my own free trial, I can definitely vouch that their tag line is indeed true. This is an online address book like I've never seen before.Now, no matter where I go, I always have access to all of my contacts because they are on-line. If my computer crashes, I have one less thing to fear about because I know my contacts are safe online. Also, I don't have to worry about carrying around an extra little book of my contacts.

Plaxo, I discovered, offers its own plus. Not only can you type in your own contacts, but you can also import your contact lists from other programs like AOL, Gmail, Facebook, and Microsoft. Then, you can re-organize your contacts by creating your own categories for them. For example, I have the categories family, friends, college friends, and professionals. These categories work for me now, but I can see where I will expand them in the future.

So far, this is what I've learned about Plaxo. Check out their blog to see what they have to say about themselves! Plaxo's blog has posts from a variety of their employees. Plaxo's President and CEO even chimes in! Sounds legitimate to me!

I Found Such a Helpful Blog

In seaching for a online program that helps people get organized, stay on task, or manage alllll of their contacts, I found this blog....

Brian Breidenbach's Blog

In his blog, Brian's posts  various websites and programs that help one manage their online contacts or help one get and stay organized. He even posted comments about online programs like Plaxo and Checkvist--two programs that I ran across in my own online searches. It was nice to have a lot of prevalent information in one place. When I read the following comment, I knew that I should look into Plaxo more:

"Plaxo is essentially the contact manager for the web.  While there are several notable contacts applications on the web.  Plaxo seems to be the one that will sync with more of them and with more devices than any other.  I will admit that I’ve had some gnarlyt problems when syncing between a dozen devices or so but I have eventually gotten them resolved." -Admin