Fergie's Tech Blog

Cisco Buys Into Vertical Social-Networking: Five Across

Nicholas Carlson writes on internetnews.com:

Cisco Systems today bought privately held social-networking vendor Five Across, lending a hand to companies wanting to go the user-generated route. The terms of the acquisition were not disclosed.

San Francisco-based Five Across was founded in 2003 by former Apple director of engineering Glenn Reid. The company's first products were aimed at the business instant messaging market, but in a statement Cisco said it bought the company for its Connect Community Builder.

Connect Community Builder is a white-label platform that allows companies to augment their Web sites with communities and user-generated content, such as audio-, video- and photo-sharing, blogs, podcasts and profiles.

Cisco spokesman John Noh told internetnews.com his company made the buy because Five Across's services were relevant to Cisco's core business -- networking.

posted by Fergie @ 2/09/2007 03:35:00 PM