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Unit 6: Cloud Computing for the Corporation

defining characteristics such as their hometown or by contact completeness. Contact favorites Notes
can be chosen within the system, but Tacts also keeps track of contact profiles you spend the
most time interacting with to develop a “Top Contacts” list — sort of like an anticipation for
who you need to reach rather than a predefined set of people. Perhaps the most important
characteristic of Tacts’ organizational capabilities is that once groups are made within the service,
the address book is altered to reflect those changes. So, Tacts groups pop up across other contact
services, making it considerably less difficult to reorganize over time.
It’s also easy on the eyes. Out of all of the applications reviewed, Tacts had the most interesting
and visually friendly UI. Its dark background is accented with interesting neon lettering and
designs, and its stock of more than 50 icons allows for plenty of personalization within the
service. It’s definitely pretty, and it gets the job done.

Cons

Unfortunately, Tacts doesn’t offer much of a rich experience beyond organization — which is a
bit of a letdown because groups functionality is already present in native contact management
software. And, while Smart Groups is a novel concept, it leans heavily on the diligence of the
user and it’s counter-intuitive to modern contact sharing. For example, how can you have a list
of contacts by city if you don’t have a new acquaintance’s address? Furthermore, does it matter?
Because there’s no way to create your own Smart Group based on custom parameters, the
concept is not very useful.

The app itself is also less intuitive than it looks at first blush. Rhythms of tapping and adding
contacts to a particular group can be rapidly halted with an accidental push of the “Store” button,
which never seems far enough away from the action. It’s also easy to get caught up in the
minutiae of organizing and developing groups, so there’s a high risk for that turned-around
feeling that can happen when you unintentionally navigate away from your intended target. It’s
not laid out to maximize efficiency, and that is frustrating.

Bottom Line

Tacts does all the organizing you could ever want, but it won’t offer you much more than that.
If you’re trying to get away from traditional contact managers, then this is not for you.

6.2.5 Soocial

Dutch startup Soocial burst onto the scene in 2006, and quickly gained steam as a popular contact
management app for those outside the US. Boasting address unification across 500 different
platforms and messaging services, Soocial capitalized on the cloud computing boom to create a
universal contacts list. Though it maintained a small, scrappy team of only 4 workers in
Amsterdam, Soocial was getting attention.
And that attention became an acquisition late last year, when professional networking site
Viadeo incorporated the Soocial team into its products. The French social network is the number
1 non-English professional site in the world, but the company is looking to capitalize on Soocial’s
service within emerging markets. All that aside, Soocial is still up and available for users via
online or mobile.

Pros

Soocial is classic cloud software, relying on a “home base” online to keep operations running
and offering peripheral applications on mobile and tablet. Importing and managing a contact

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