Venture Beat reports that Five Across a provider of social community software has been acquired by Cisco for an undisclosed sum.
“Based on conversations with three or four different Cisco executives in
recent months, it is clear Cisco sees social networking and the wider
Web 2.0 phenomenon as ways to drive Internet traffic, and thus traffic
over their routers and other networking gear — and, it follows, more
revenue for Cisco.”
“Five Across offers the features you expect in a social networking
company: Individual profiles, chat, video and photo uploading, RSS and
more.”
Five Across end user features closely parallel other Social Networking community sites like Onesite, Sparta Social Networks.
InfoWorld says “Cisco doesn’t plan to set up its own
social-networking site to compete against News Corp.’s MySpace or
Facebook. Instead, it will use Five Across technology to create
software that will help enterprises better connect with their
customers. In addition, service providers may be able to build services
with the technology and sell them to their business customers, Cisco
said.”“
The acquisition is the first by Cisco’s recently
formed Media Solutions Group and part of Cisco’s expansion into both
the consumer and media categories. One target market for the Five
Across technology will be entertainment and broadcasting companies such
as The Walt Disney Co. and Comcast.”