Cisco goes Tribal, buys Tribe Social Networking Site

According to this article on New York Times; Next week Cisco Systems, a Silicon Valley heavyweight, plans to announce one of its most unusual deals: it is buying the technology assets of Tribe.net, a mostly forgotten social networking site, according to people close to the companies’ discussions.
Executives at Cisco and Utah Street Networks, Tribe.net’s parent company, declined to comment on their deal or its terms. But people close to the discussions said Tribe.net would remain an independent site, while its underlying technology would go to Cisco.

Dan Scheinman, the mergers and acquisition chief who led the Linksys and Scientific Atlanta purchases, now runs a new division at Cisco called the Media Solutions Group, which has been responsible for the deals for Five Across and Tribe.net.

After the Five Across acquisition, Mr. Scheinman said in an interview that Americans were quickly changing their media consumption habits. He said his new group would let Cisco help its media customers, like TV networks and cable companies, develop their sites and move more of their content onto the Web.

Tags: social networks, Tribe, cisco