Back in 2009, Plaxo decided to stop their FREE offering, whereby you could sync your address book between your mail client and the Plaxo platform.
Since then they started hogging their online platform with all kinds of 3rd party applications similar to Facebook Apps, and they started leveraging and doing a lot of social stream on their platform.
Recently, Plaxo announced that they will be relaunching their platform, and will be refocusing themselves back to their core business, which is managing user address books and take them back to where they came from.
I see this as a great move, for them to focus on their niche, instead of trying to build a whole social website.
I think though they still can leverage from other social networks, with regards to getting latest contact information etc from the other sosical streams but they must not overdo social interaction within the Plaxo site, again – just keep to their focus niche.
I’m backing Plaxo on this one, maybe I’ll consider buying their paid-for products …