Posted May 9th, 2008 by shally

When I received the announcement from Plaxo that they were releasing the ability to search for people in the Plaxo network I was surprised. After all, Plaxo was originally intended as a way for me to backup my contacts safely so knowing that others can now search my personal "virtual rolodex" freaked me out.

But as it turns out that's not the case. If you log into your Plaxo account and conduct a search, you will see that it is limited to only contact names. This is good because it means my contacts remain confidential.

But... 

It did get me thinking.  If you enter in a job title, jargon or company name you may find Plaxo Groups. These groups may easily contain people that may lead you to useful prospects. For example, a search for .net revealed this "Microsoft .NET Developers" group consisting of 209 members. Upon joining the group I am now able to  see all members in a Directory listing fashion. Each of the member names is hyperlinked to that person's profile, and to a place where I can invite them to connect. So, I could use this to source people by joining groups and connecting with their members!

Not bad, worth a try. I also found groups for Finance Professionals like for example Accountants and even Audit. Check it out!