Migrants to IJ, 2007

Plaxo, the contact-sharing service trying to reinvent itself as a social network, may have sold itself to Google for something close to $200 million.And if the rumor's true, I think the companies may be doing it out offriendship. One could bloviate endlessly here about industryconsolidation, user-data portability, and so on -- and I'm sure you'll read plenty of that.I think the real reason is much simpler. Brad Fitzpatrick, theLiveJournal founder now leading Google's social-network strategy, wantsto work with Joseph Smarr, Plaxo's chief platform architect.

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