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Call Google's OpenSocial intiative a PR scam if you want. Executives from social network Plaxo don't care — because for them, it was a successful PR scam. Take a look at the chart they provided CNET. Since Google announced its "open" alternative to Facebook's developer platform and included Plaxo as a launch partner, growth at Pulse, Plaxo's social network/address book hybrid, took on hockey-stick dimensions.

"I've never seen a growth chart with such a sharply pronounced inflection point," Plaxo marketing executive John McCrea told CNET. "Within hours of the Google OpenSocial social network service unfolding, it was surge conditions here. Our service almost buckled."

Of course, OpenSocial is thoroughly half-baked. The fact that you'll soon be able to throw virtual sheep at fellow Plaxo users should not have, by itself, driven usage up. What that tells me is that McCrea hasn't been doing his job. If some wonky API announcement mentioning Plaxo was enought to bring users of Plaxo's Pulse to 1 million, imagine what would happen if McCrea actually started marketing this thing.