Social Networking Limitations can affect your reputation with or without your knowledge. I am a regular user and fan of a few networking services, and Plaxo was one of my favorites until after introduction of Pulse, came the limitations of contacts to such a degree that using Plaxo Premium no longer offered the Premium service I valued when I started using them some 3 or so years ago.
With recent contact limits being introduced to Plaxo, it became more obvious to many professionals that there is a lot riding on their contact data, and not losing it to company mergers and acquisitions is a very desirable notion to preserve.
I have been a long standing fan of Plaxo for the Address book functionality, but when I start hitting the wall with contact limits, I began looking at alternatives. I am a premium service member, which essentially means I pay extra for the ability to send cool and clever greeting cards and birthday reminder/calendaring capabilities. I liked it, but I embrace limitless open networks of possibility thinkers, so contact limits is not the way to make me feel I am getting value for my dollar.
Alternatively, you use your Plaxo account as a new people connector, and then disconnect from those you import to ACT, but that kinda defeats the goodness that Plaxo once brought, in keeping everyone you want to stay connected, connected. This is a good thing, and valued, expecially in economic times where people's contact information changes quickly. It's not just recruiters who want to keep in touch.. Jobseekers who don't like the idea of losing their references due to industry change, business professionals who don't want to start again because of reductions in workforce, professionals who choose to stay in touch, because technology is an enabler... all important users of Contact Management Services and Social Networking.
WHEN FREE OR LOW COST IS TOO HIGH A PRICE TO PAY: When the cost or lack of service becomes an issue to the services you value, the cost is too high to pay.
- Keeping accessible despite change, only works if the backbone is resilient enough to handle it's users.
- Keeping accessible to industry influencer segments might in some sectors require more networking numbers, simply to deliver value from the social networking platform.
PLAXO INTRODUCTION OF CONTACT LIMITS: Causes affected users to get a message indicating they must either delete some of their contacts to accept new ones, or wait for resolution.
RESOLUTION OPTIONS: What if people are at the heart of your business? Is it fair to impose restrictions that compromise the value you hoped the service would bring?
- Accepting the logic of deleting contacts when you have some several thousand contacts would take approximately several hours to comb through each candidate, one at a time, and delete down to the acceptable limits.
- Adopting a spirit of optimism that certainly developers would not introduce something with such limiting business value, without intent to correct. Accepting the logic that these contacts can either be ignored (affecting your reputation with people you choose to network with) or responded, I elected to send a message to each of them. Clicking through 41 requests using a less than personal template message took me 20 minutes to complete... and then I had to remember where I left off, because nothing removes them from queue if you are waiting for a solution.
In PLAXO: If you have premium service with backups configured, automatic backups are made on your contacts and you can run a recovery wizard for various points in time. - If you have a relatively small base of contacts to transport, you may start with Plaxo's LinkedIn- Manage Sync Point. Configure it under Address Book > Plaxo Tools Menu on the right hand corner of your address book. Then select SYNC WITH LINKED IN. Sync Wizard will report progress, however if you have over 10,000 contacts, the limits of import will not complete. IF your progress DOES complete, you can proceed to move all your LinkedIn contacts to Plaxo, and all your Plaxo files become unified. If not, expect some data synch issues to be addressed between systems.
- Run the DeDuper to "De dupe ALL your contact folders" in Plaxo I had 4 folders totalling some 7K contacts, click NEXT. Next you will get a message "analyzing your contacts" when done, it will tell you how many are exact or close matches and the interface will allow you to quality check them to determine how it handles merging the close matches. You can approve each merge, or APPROVE ALL recommended transactions. Click FINISH. The system will tell you howe many duplicates were eliminated. CLOSE.
- In Address Book, prepare to Export all contacts. For each folder, select it, then SELECT ALL CONTACTS: noting how many contacts are being moved. In the SYNC WIZARD, CLICK HERE to export and the format to Sync to (Outlook, Google, LinkedIn, MSN) Keep repeating this process until your contact limits hit, at which time, it is no longer necessary to back up that which is not changing due to limitations.. Then it will be time to look at an alternative.
BACK UP ALTERNATIVEs: Please share any other alternatives you might have identified. I had to look at a backup plan because not having my contacts is not an option. I do not yet know if ACT can completely replace what I know and love about Plaxo, but I do know that I must find a backup to my concerns for what I see as a growing elephant in the petite sized living room.
A. INSTALL ACT on Windows Import your Outlook records into your database. (Note the number of records and process as it is being done). Note the # of records introduced, and audited a sampling of them to make sure it looked like everything is coming across.
- FILE> IMPORT the file format you have created from Outlook to a CSV format.
- Map the resulting CSV Source file with how you want the data being brought into ACT (Data Type Text Delimited (CSV).
- Complete the Import of your contact records using Wizard> Finish.
B. In LinkedIn: From LinkedIn select the EXPORT LINKEDIN Connections Option. Select the Export File format Microsoft Outlook (.CSV file), click EXPORT. By default this file export will be named to your default directory using linkedin_connections_export_(Fileformat).csv.
LinkedIn Groups: Business Network | Jobs Network | Recruiting Professionals | Plaxo Groups: Business Network | LI2 Recruiting Professionals | Socials: Ryze | MySpace | Ning | Hi5 | MerchantCircle | Plaxo |
Yahoo Networking Links Libraries: Jobs | HR | Telecommuters | LI HFCN | TheSecret | Careers |
Dawn: | ERE | Facebook | Frappr | Friendster | Hi5 | Jaxster | Jobster | Joso | Konnects| Lijit | Linked In | Marzar | MyBlogLog | MySpace | Naymz | Ning | Orkut | Plaxo | Ryze | Spock | Stumble | Tagged | Tribe | Twitter | Viadeo | Xing | Yahoo | Zaadz
