Soocial, the Dutch Plaxo competitor, is officially launching today. They have been in closed beta for a while now but are confident enough about their technology to invite the general public now. Soocial enables you to sync your data between your computers, your phones and web applications like Gmail and other web based information managers.
We just spoke with CEO Stefan Fountain who is currently visiting San Francisco (together with co-founder Daniel Spronk) and will speak at the Under the Radar conference there. As of today Soocial will also support Outlook and the Blackberry and over 400 types of mobile phones.
Unfortunately the Blackberry sync won’t be available until later this week and the Outlook client is still in Alpha and who would want to risk their AddressBook with an Alpha product?
Stefan explained that in the future he wants Soocial to able to sync with Windows Live, Yahoo Mail, LinkedIn and devices like the iPhone. Soocial also had meetings this week with several companies, including Plaxo, to discuss working together. According to Stefan the people at Plaxo, contrary to what you might expect, reacted very positive and do not consider Soocial a competitor at this time. They mentioned that Soocial could become a potential business partner that could strengthen their Mobile services offerings.
As you can see from the their logo and website the founders of Soocial have a well developed sense of humor and aren’t shy to promote their service in originals ways. Below is a victory dance Stefan did after they raised their first round of funding. Well, I just made that up. I have no idea why he did that dance but it looks very impressive to me. Watch it and decide for yourself:
MobileMe just works for me. But if you take a look at the blogosphere sometimes I seem to be the only on in the world who has a positive experience. Either way, some companies are using MobileMe’s bad rep to launch their own and competing products.
You could use Gmail, Soocial, Plaxo and, since last week, give fruux a try if you are fed up with MobielMe.
fruux is the latest entry into this market. It is a small and convenient system preference pane, that syncs your AddressBook between different macs. fruux supports sync conflict resolution which will help you when you changed a contact on more than one machine.
fruux is a Germany based student start-up. They launched their public beta before the weekend and it is currently localized to German and English. Calendar and bookmark syncing will be added in one of the next updates.
It’s still beta software, so (although nobody managed to kill his AddressBook with fruux yet) we strongly recommend having an AddressBook backup. On the other hand we strongly recommend having a backup even if people don’t try fruux! When was the last time YOU back-up your AddressBook?
Their Road map looks pretty interesting too:
- Bookmark Syncing
- Calendar Syncing
- Preferences Syncing
- “Social Syncing”
- iPhone Sync Client
- fruux Webapp (Addressbook/Calendar/Bookmarks on the go from any internetconnected device)
Download the App for free at the fruux blog or check out this gallery with a few screenshots:
A friend of mine has an impressive stack of glossies. She’s an intelligent girl, but when it comes to magazines this doesn’t seem to matter. A few days ago I glanced through one of those journals, and my eye fell on an article about the most popular YouTube videos. The poor “web editor” had a hard time explaining why Rick Astley, the long forgotten singer of “Never Gonna Give you Up“, was on the first place. Apparently, she hadn’t heard of RickRolling.
Eighties stars are popular these days, maybe we can call this decade already “retro”. Take David Hasselhof for example. The Baywatch/ KnightRider hero is the new PR guy for Soocial, a Dutch start-up that takes care of your contacts-syncing needs. Minor detail: he has no idea that 750 people laughed about a short Soocial promo movie at the last Next Web Conference, featuring him. Some people DO hassle the Hoff.
But now, the German hero has started his own competition. In one of the most genuinely-written blog posts I have ever read, Hasselhof explains the procedure:
Anyway… I was thinking… You guys keep seeing me singing and performing but I want to see what you can do… So here it is – the first official HoffSpace competition – I want you to send in your videos of you singing or lip-syncing my songs from all over the world. I want to see great locations, great costume, great performances and great imagination… Upload them to the video section and mark them as Hoff Video Competition… I am going to think about a prize but it will be something very cool!!!
Despite his enthusiasm, I’m afraid this competition will not blow any life into the Hoff’s singing career. You see, mr. Hasselhoff misses the point here that eighties stars are only cool when other people – not yourself – start a hype. Not because the star has made great songs, no, just because he or she looks ridiculously outdated.
But don’t worry David, the whole Soocial-thing is a good start for a second career. Most eighties stars haven’t got a write-up on TechCrunch yet. Before you know it, your “Looking for freedom” has been watched 25 million times and you give shows all over the world. Just call Rick whenever you loose your faith.
In only 2 days The Next Web Conference 2008 will be held in Amsterdam, The Netherlands. We will post short daily updates about speakers, initiatives and events here.
Earlier we announced the 24 start-ups that would present on stage at The Next Web Conference in two days. We announced the first 22 and we thought it would be a good idea to let you decide who you want to see in the last two 5 minute presentations.
So now YOU can decide which 2 companies will present on stage on Friday. The two companies who have the most votes on Wednesday April 2nd at noon will be presenting on The Next Web.
We played around with a couple of widgets and Poll PHP Scripts but decided it would be more fun to simply count comments.
Here are the companies:
Up2date.net Navigation by Meaning: Easy navigation from daily mail, documents & search to related information by a semantic navigation map.
VIDDIX.com VIDDIX is a new video platform that allows users to add all kinds of webcontent to their video timeline. This new video platform will enrich the online video experience in ways never before seen on the web.
Locle.com Locle is the hottest mobile geo-social networking app, showing your location and if friends are near, without a need for GPS or operator LBS.
Soocial.com Hassle-free contacts for people with friends. The same addressbook on your phone, Macs, webapps like GMail and Highrise and access via API.
Wuzzon.com
Wuzzon stops the ringtone mafia! Celebrating their 1st anniversary & ready to conquer the world. Vote for this female dynamic duo on stage!
So go ahead, leave a comment here with the name of the company you would like to see on stage! The company wih the most comments will win!
Haven’t registered yet? Do it now before we are sold out…
This is a guest post by Stefan Fountain from Dutch start-up Soocial.
By now most will have read about theZuckerbergrevolt (video here, and more), the release of Clickpass, and all the other big news. Yet I noticed something equally remarkable at the SXSW conference in Texas last week.
Building Portable Social Networks Panel – with Jeremy Keith, Chris Messina, Leslie Chicoine, Joseph Smarr, David Recordon
My impression of SXSW has been generally very good, the quality of the panels outstanding, yet the most important part of visiting this conference was – surprise! – meeting people. Walking around and having conversations with the likes of JavaScript heroes John Resig (jQuery), Thomas Fuchs (script.aculo.us), Sam Stephenson (Prototype), Chris Messina (OAuth evangelist), Simon Willison (OpenID evangelist). At parties I met people from Google, Microsoft or Yahoo! in various stages of intoxication. I even got some quick peeks at Billy Bob Thornton and Moby.
It wasn’t until the last day at the closing party when I was talking to a hard-to-understand German that I realized something. This was the first European I had spoken to. We met the great guys from Brighton-based Clearleft and quite a few other British guys, but where were the main-land Europeans? Perhaps I missed them, yet I’m judging from the panels, parties we went to and after speaking to over a hundred people. The statistics support my theory. My contact at SXSW confirms that 3 percent of the attendees came from the European mainland. Although the statistics on traffics to sxsw.com probably don’t say much, cumulative European visits is around 16 percent.
For what is arguably the most important tech event of the year, is the lack of European involvement a sign of something greater? Is it the current political climate, lack of European startups, overkill of our collective chauvinism or <enter any far-fetched reason here>? I don’t know, but what I do think it’s important to be present either to influence someone’s views, or to be influenced and inspired yourself.
So I would encourage European startups and established companies to head over to SXSW next year as it is well worth the money, jet lag, the occasional loud Americans, fat food and other pre-conceptions largely encountered on this trip. I think it’s time we head over the pond to learn, meet and share our own wealth of knowledge.
Written on 12th November 2008
0 COMMENTS 
Soocial, the Dutch Plaxo competitor, is officially launching today. They have been in closed beta for a while now but are confident enough about their technology to invite the general public now. Soocial enables you to sync your data between your computers, your phones and web applications like Gmail and other web based information managers.
Written on 9th June 2008
Written on 16th March 2008
The Next Web Blog is closely associated with The Next Web Conference which is held annually in Amsterdam, The Netherlands. At this event speakers from all over the world come together to talk about, and show off, the future of the Web. (More info 
