Idea 035 - Update your address book automatically

This post is part of the 100 project ideas project. #The100DayProject. I am looking for feedback. Comment below or DM me via social media Instagram, Twitter.

One Line Pitch

Get your contacts to update their information in your address book

Description

When I meet someone I will ask for their contact information, email, phone number, social media info, home address and add it to my address book (google contacts). As years go by and people move, change their phone numbers, get married and change their names, etc… The contact information I have for them becomes out of date.

I want to create a tool that will send out an email to the people in my contact list and ask them to update a form with their contact information. The link in the email will have a personalized link to a form that is pre-populated with the information that I already have on them. The user then either confirms the information or updates it as necessary. When the information is updated, the tool will then update your address book to match.

The user who sends out the emails gets a benefit as their address book is up to date.

With the contact list, we can create a node network of who knows who. A knowledge base of everyone’s contact information.

Personally I would never give access to my address book to a third party. I assume most other people are the same. I think this idea is a non-starter for most people.

There might be some legal issues here in a 3rd party contacting people to update their information. Although we would get permission from the person that wants to send these emails out.

Edit

Reverse the action instead of you asking for an update you push your contact

Centralize the address book into a website.

• “User A” Creates an account on this address book website.
• Then updates their own information.
• Then selects who in their own contact book should receive updates when they change their own information.
• “User B” receives a email from address book website with the updated contact information for “User A”. Included in the email is a call to action telling “User B” to use the address book website to keep their contact information up to day.
• If “User A” and “User B” both use the address book website then when “User A” updates their contact, “user B” automatically gets the update without an email. (The world is better place)
• If “User B” doesn’t join the address book website then they will forever get notifications from “User A” when he updates his contact info. (punishment for not making the world a better place)
• “User B” can opt out of reciving updates from Everyone or just “User A”

Prior art

• Linkedin is the de facto contact list for business but it gets overwhelmed with spam pretty quickly. It’s not useful for personal contact information.
• How Do You Ask For Contact Details In An Email? - some general tips and tricks to how to ask for people’s contact info.
• Keybase

Market

I think the market would be pretty small as I hope people are more security conscious to not give their contact information to anyone.