Cisco: Now it's Tribe

Saturday, March 3. 2007

Is this the beginning of the inevitable consolidation that seems to be coming in the online community space?

First it was Five Apart, a community platform company. Yesterday Cisco announced it was buying Tribe. Thanks to Mukund for the heads up.

From TechCrunch:
"The hope is to use the two company’s technology to help Cisco’s corporate clients build their own social networks, so it isn’t clear whether or not the Tribe service itself will live on."

Just to give a hint at what is to come, check out Jeremiah Owyang's comments on the infrastructure field being overcrowded and his list of 37 white label services.

What's going to drive / driving the explosion in online community interest? Some companies are starting to see real, tangible value from their communities (read: ROI). Other companies are comfortable with the investment for affinity purposes, especially when the investment is compared to other programs like brand campaigns and advertising... or even the cost of simple, global marcomm web sites. The rest are struggling to figure out a strategy, or simply just don't care.

My belief is that every organization that values their business, brand equity and customer base will figure out some sort of an online engagement with their audience over the next 2-3 years. This engagement will be a bi-directional and networked style of communication that will involve a sincere attempt at relationship building. Scoble said something a couple of years ago about every corporate web site being replaced by a blog at some point (sorry, couldn't find the post). At the time, I thought he was nuts. Now I think, at least in spirit, he was 100% on the mark.

Update: Meaning, not blogs per say, but the bi-directional and networked engagement I mentioned above.

What do you think?

Posted by Bill Johnston in News at 15:53 | Comments (2) | Trackbacks (0)

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Hi Bill,
I firmly agree that within 2-3 years businesses will be working on new ways to engage with customers in some sort of community-centric/social fashion. Something I've found myself saying lately is that the basics of business success are not changing - it's still about relationships with customers. What's changing is the expectations of customers regarding the nature of the relationship. The businesses that "get it" will be the ones that can evolve to meet or exceeed these changing expectations. The ones that do will find that these new relationships represent an amazing competitive advantage that can drive innovation, etc. Some will see this as the ROI.
Cisco buying Tribe and Five Across is showing that they are investing in these news ways to meet the changing expectations of customers. I think they make strange bed-partners, but it's an interesting example of how community is becoming more mainstream.
I don't know about sites becoming a blog, per se, but social? Yes, most definitely. Thanks for the post.

#1 Lee LeFever (Homepage) on 2007-03-03 18:45 (Reply)

Lee
There is another school of thought. Dont have a website, just a blog, then slowly organize the rest of the website as time goes by.

Bill

#2 Mukund Mohan (Homepage) on 2007-03-03 20:21 (Reply)

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