After cooling somewhat, a new move from tech giant Cisco Systems shows that the social networking M&A market is still hot. This week, the Silicon Valley firm is set to announce the acquisition of
Tribe.net, a smallish social network (eight employees) that's been looking for buyer for what seems like ages (Facebook anyone?).
It's a curious move considering that Cisco never had
anything to do with the media business before. They're the pipes and back-end guys, the hardware creators and enablers of many of our wireless routers and modems. So why buy Tribe -- especially since
the company has been all but left in the dust by MySpace, Facebook and Bebo? This is an area Cisco wants to move into, as the tech giant attempts to merge the assets of Tribe with Five Across, the
social-network design firm it also purchased recently.
Cisco will use these combined services to offer social-networking capabilities to large corporate clients. They're going after
the idea that social networking will soon replace closed-off Web portals, chat programs and other social networks like MySpace -- and they're probably right. As ever, the Web industry is trending
toward better, easier communications. It would be enormously useful for employees at big companies to be instantly linked in as many ways as possible.
Read the whole story at The New York Times »