Pladeo on Facebook = totally unusable

By Vivek | June 18th, 2007 at 01:01 am ET         

InCircles, which had changed it’s name to Pladeo recently, has also jumped onto the Facebook platform. While the idea of chat on a profile page might sound interesting, Pladeo has yet to fix the old issues of usability.

Getting the app added to your profile page is pretty much the regular process with an additional step where a piece of code has to be added to your profile page. But from there, Pladeo is making sure not many users would come back. To bring up the chat box, you need to click on the white space in the profile page. While the chat box comes up just fine, there is no username synchronization between Facebook usernames and Pladeo usernames. Basically you need to give your name to the app if you don’t want to stay anonymous. Even if you do and leave a message and then browse to some Facebook page and return to the same profile where you left the message, Pladeo doesn’t remember you username. Huh. Don’t think that will ever work out with the users.

On the whole, the app is far from being an instant messaging app, but instead competes with Facebook’s “The Wall” without the user sync.

Links:
Pladeo on Facebook
StartupSquad on Facebook