Cisco Expands Its Social Circle

When you think of Cisco, the company's prowess in networking and IP technology immediately comes to mind. With today's announcement, however, it appears that Cisco is branching out into a different kind of networking, the kind geared toward people rather than machines.

Five Across. The package includes a variety of social features for businesses such as individual profile pages, friend lists, discussions, and posting of blogs, videos and podcasts.

"There's quite a bit of need for experimentation from [traditional] media companies to show their stockholders they can take advantage of the Web and they're not going to cede it to new media companies," says IDC consumer analyst Danielle Levitas in an
Levitas continues, "Web-based content is incredibly bit-heavy. Social networking brings end users into the game so there is a lot of data coming upstream from the edge of the network as well as downstream from the company."

The growing demand for transparency from enterprises is one of the primary motivators for the implementation of social features. Consumers don't want to just download information, they also want an avenue in which they can interact with companies and have their ideas, praises, and criticisms heard as well as gain valuable insight into a company's internal practices.



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