Xobni vs. Gist- Address Book Integration

It's quite simple- THERE IS NONE.  Both of these services are closed environments, attempting to replace your existing address book as opposed to working WITH your address book.  Actually, that's not entirely correct since Xobni is plugged into Outlook and you have to select the address book contact to view their details; but you make changes in either one, they do not get sync'ed with your existing contacts.

This is one of the major reasons I wanted to focus on these products on my synchronization blog.  I wanted to make sure that anyone interested in using either of these services knew this going in.  They are meant to be replacements, not provide additional support.  

While Gist does offer the flexibility to export the contacts into a CSV/vcard format, it is still a manual process.  In other words, yet another thing to keep track of.

To put this in terms of my audience for this blog- If one of your contacts changes jobs and modifies their job title on their LinkedIn profile, that change DOES NOT get pushed out to Outlook or your Blackberry except in the Xobni software interface.  You still have to update the contacts' information locally because they want you to stay in their walled garden.  Personally, I have a problem with this.  If I decide to stop using Xobni, I want that information under my control, not someone else's.

Winner: None