A week ago we announced: Deathmatch: Spoke vs. Plaxo.  May the best online contact manager win.

The Winner is in by a knock out!  Plaxo crushed Spoke on every count.

We are just going to put Spoke out of its misery here.  No need for a two week evaluation the result are clear (click here for original contest).  All thumbs down for Spoke and all thumbs up for Plaxo.  Let the Lions now enter the Colosseum to clean up…

The basic promise of both services is to automate contact management.  To primarily help you keep your contacts up-to-date.  Both services extend their offerings in different ways and we did not try to compare services head to head, although how they extend their offerings does show up as aspects of the evaluation criteria.

Methodology used for Deathmatch

Simple, but both services out there to a wide selection of friends and business contacts to see who uses what and how they liked it.  Feedback was solicited via LinkedIn, Facebook, Plaxo’s Stream, Twitter, Spoke, and direct email contacts.

Evaluation Criteria Used for Deathmatch

• Intrusiveness or Privacy Friendly

  • Do you feel like you’re about to Spam your friends?
  • Are you worried the software is doing too much or going too far?

• Ease of Use

  • RTFM required?
  • Fairly easy to get up and running?
  • Easy to maintain once installed.

• Utility value

  • You actually use it!
  • Adds value, glad you installed it.
  • Would recommend to a friend.

• Integration with eMail

  • Ideally embeds in both Web and Outlook clients.
  • Can seamlessly keep contacts up-to-date.
  • Does not duplicate contacts, helps to merge contacts.

• Adoption Acceptance (sniff test)

  • Curb appeal, when someone new looks at it they get a good vibe.
  • Software reinforces legitimacy and safe to use.

Evaluation Results from the Deathmatch

• Intrusiveness or Privacy Friendly

  • Spoke feels wrong from the start, doesn’t hint at intrusive, defines it.
  • Plaxo clean, feels more private, feels more corporate.

• Ease of Use

  • Both are fairly easy to use, however, Spoke is more Black Box
  • Spoke’s network building is interesting in concept.
  • Plaxo simply works.  The inexpensive adds are worth it.

• Utility value

  • Plaxo, if upgraded, become indispensable.
  • Spoke may have it, but didn’t get to see it… (see acceptance)

• Integration with eMail

  • Spoke, out of the Box, provide deeper integration with Outlook.
  • Spoke does not play as nicely with any other client.
  • Plaxo offers seamless Outlook and Gmail integration.
  • Plaxo, upgraded, offers excellent integration and utility value.

• Adoption Acceptance (sniff test)

  • No one adopted Spoke.  Without fail new users chose Plaxo over Spoke.
  • Despite Spoke’s premises and differences Plaxo users felt no reason to “add on”.
  • Users connected on one Platform, such as Facebook, added Plaxo and/or Linkedin.

Lack of acceptance is what killed Spoke in this Deathmatch.  In one week’s time 37 new Plaxo connections were made, 41 Facebook connections, and 11 new LinkedIn connections.  Zero connection were made on Spoke.  I actually had people send me gmail Chat messages asking if they had to join Spoke.  There is something about the interface which “spooks” Spoke.   For more information call us 484-639-9789.

Find us:
http://linkedin.com/in/haslamjj
http://Josepf.myplaxo.com
http://twitter.com/GuruLocalSEO
http://google.com/profiles/josepf.haslam
http://facebook.com/Business.Help
http://www.spoke.com/profiles/Josepf