A few technical questions

[RickyB]

I'm curious how the contact and calendar information is stored on the Plaxo servers since this information is being synced with so many different services. Do you have your own proprietary format, or do you use an open format such as .ical or vCards?

I only ask because I'm wondering what the impact of data integrity is when syncing between multiple services. For example, if Plaxo has a field that is not present in Outlook, is this field preserved in a proprietary format so that a sync in the other direction is not corrupted? I'm assuming this is the case. Thanks for your hard work!

[ryan]

Hi RickyB,

Yes we store contact and calendar information in a proprietary format, which is basically a superset of everything that is out there (including ical/vcard). We have quite an amazing amount of technology we have developed that allows us to discover, describe, and understand the schema, capabilities and restrictions (of which there are more than we had ever dreamed) of every place we sync with.

Cheers,
Ryan

[RickyB]

Thanks! This is what I figured. This is a very impressive setup, indeed. Keep up the good work!