Cisco's wrong bet on Social Networks
A few months after switch-and-router maker Cisco Systems acquired a content-management start-up, Five Across, the San Jose giant is going to acquire the assets of Tribe.net, an early social network, reports The New York Times.
Context & Ripple Effects
Cisco is following its completed Five Across acquisition with a reported deal for the technology assets of Tribe.net, one of the earlier social networks, according to The New York Times' same-day look at social networking's next phase. Both deals point the same direction: a switch-and-router vendor buying consumer-web software it can resell into carrier and media offerings.
The pickup was broad — TechCrunch, Mashable and A VC all covered it within a day — but the tone was skeptical rather than celebratory; Mashable's headline asked flatly what Cisco is doing, and A VC's 'all software should be social' framing treated the buyer, not the targets, as the open question.
First-order effects
- Tribe.net's community gets an enterprise parent with no consumer track record, while Cisco gains social-platform code to pair with Five Across' content-management tools — though the Tribe deal remains unconfirmed, reported by the Times via people close to the discussions.
Second-order effects
- Carriers and media companies become the real target market: Cisco can now bundle community and content tools alongside its networking gear, pressuring rivals to justify selling pipes without a software layer on top.
Third-order effects
- If infrastructure vendors keep absorbing specialist web startups, independent social platforms face a shrinking set of exits — consolidation into equipment makers that treat community features as attach-rate revenue rather than standalone businesses.
The trend: Network equipment makers are buying their way up the stack into social and media software, betting bundles beat best-of-breed.