Here we go again…Ipso Facto Plaxo!

That may sound like an incantation from “Wicked”, but no, sadly, it isn’t.  It’s yet another site to for me to practice my social network skills on.  I had signed up for Plaxo a while back when it was simply a place to keep addresses updated.  Then = simple, understandable purpose.  Now, it’s trying to be LinkedIn or Facebook or who knows what.  I tried to ignore it, but then I started getting connection requests coming in and I thought that I better check in (especially with someone named “Wiley” sent me a connection request.)  I claim somewhere to be a master of all things social networking - how can Plaxo elude me the way Twitter has? I clicked on the link to accept all of these, and it took me to a screen where the notice “that connection request has already been handled” came up.  Funny then that I cannot find these people in my connection list.  Did they try and connect and suddenly decide, nah, Ellen’s not my Plaxo type?  Did they fall into a Plaxo void?  No idea. 

I started with a whopping four connections (the usual Wiley suspects, my brother in law, and a friend from town.)  All of a sudden, I have 5 connect requests in my mailbox.  Why did Plaxo suddenly hit the radar screen for these folks?  I sent a note to the person who requested the most recent connection, who said he inadvertently requested connection with all his LinkedIn contacts.  That’s one way to build your network here, so I tried it and found a whopping 45 people on Plaxo connected to me already through LinkedIn.  So I intentionally sent connections to them.

So….now I’m connected, what should I be doing next?  This isn’t the most intuitive site.  I see a “Pulse Stream”  but so far only Jeff Pulver and Chris Webb have anything going in there.  Any suggestions from people who might have a better masterly of Plaxo than I of what to do next?  How to use this site for good, and not the evil that comes from time wasting?