Idea Feedback Request - Address Book Feature
I have a problem with my address book: Almost all my contacts are outdated or incomplete.
I would like to have not only the name and number of my contacts but also their email, addresses or other important information.
Asking for that information and completing it manually is such a painful job that it drove me to come up with this idea:
For any of your address book contacts, you can generate a "request info form". You send the form's URL to your contact (via email, SMS, WhatsApp...) so that your contact fills it with his/her updated data and that data is written down directly to your address book.
The only thing that you would do is send them the URL so that they fill up their contact information and help you update their contact in your address book.
What do you think?
I had an idea many years ago...
To flip the address book on it's head. Right now, we're each storing data and if you have 10 contacts and I have 10 contacts but there are 5 that overlap that's a lot of duplicate data. And, as you have said data can get out of date.
My idea was for each person to only manage their own data. When you make a new contact you choose what data to share with them and it then appears in their address book. So, for a work contact, I might share my work email, work phone, etc. For personal I might share my cell number. And, for a doctors office I might share personal and work so they can reach me anywhere. The challenge with that idea is it requires mass adoption. No one wants to be the first user because there's no value for the first user. I don't think there's a way to integrate into Gmail for read/write permission of contact details but if you could integrate across Gmail, LinkedIn, WhatsApp, Facebook, etc. it might be a way to build the user base.
Long story short, I agree you have identified a problem many people have. Your solution is better than mine in that it doesn't require mass adoption but it doesn't reduce the data entry problem or the problem of contact details getting out of date again.
Not sure if that helps but hope it does,
Hi, yeah I agree with you. Address books are outdated and misused nowadays but it's very difficult to create a new product to fill that gap. I have some ideas about it but 0 successful implementations so far.