I picked up a juicy rumor this weekend that Cisco may have acquired Click.tv, a video annotation and deep tagging service that launched in 2006 and then shut down last month.
When Click.tv closed down last month they said in an email to users “While I regret this shutdown, I am very excited by the reason behind it. You’ll be seeing Click.TV technology very soon doing *much* bigger and better things.” This certainly suggested a complete relaunch or an acquisition.
Was it Cisco? Maybe. They’ve been making some interesting plays in the web space, with acquisitions of Five Across, Tribe and WebEx. Five Across and Tribe are both in the social networking space. I’m not sure how Click.tv would fit into those plans. So for now I’m going to label this as possible but not more. I’m digging for additional sources.
goodness… interesting…
Cisco has the power to become ‘cool’ through acquisitions alone.
**Off topic **
Mike your site seems to be reloading every time I scroll down (not the whole site) just something makes the loading bar appear … in firefox.
– Just wanted to state that..
-RB
p.s. anyone else?
Thank you for the post. And thanks for always keeping us readers so well informed about the latest technology news and trends. You guys are the best!
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Hey Mike, howcome the reader count dropped from 530K to 512K?
There’s a lot of potential for bringing Click.tv’s ability to add context and combining it with WebEx business communications. Here’s what I wrote about it on my blog:
“[...]When GMail was first announced, one of the most revolutionary ideas it brought to the mainstream was the idea of never having to delete an e-mail again. That, combined with GMail’s tagging ‘label’ing features and fantastic search capabilities, has made it possible for the average user to store every e-mail they’ve ever received, still have easy access to it years later, and(with a little foresight and planning with labels) have it sorted into meaningful contexts.
For business-people and office users, those benefits are even greater. Imagine what it would be like to have that kind of organization and context applied to business video conferences. It would mean that a communications medium vastly more powerful than e-mail could be organized, analyzed, and enhanced just as e-mail can be.[...]“
Maybe this email suggests a relaunch with a whole new different sphere of services included. They have already tested the waters with video annotation and deep tagging. Maybe they want to throw themselves in a new area. It would be really interesting to see what the future will bring for them.
email to an Yahoo.com ID to get updates on the status of launch/solutions?
Thats bad…
When it was first announced Cisco was venturing into social networking…there seemed to have been a lot of skepticism.
No doubt this acquisition, if confirmed, will go one step further in removing the stigma of Cisco being a “routers” company….
good on you cisco
the old hands are getting good at this – why pay retail for acquisitions when you can just let them starve to death and you can pick up the cadaver for ten cents on the dollar?
yes people, this is what all of your weekends and long nights and credit card bills and dirty pizza boxes covered in ants and three days since you showered and skidmarked underwear is all dedicated to – TEN CENTS ON THE DOLLAR
75% of people doing online anything need to leave the business yesterday. that is all you need to know about this business.
‘whoopee’: You’re saying that Cisco should have… what? ‘Fed’ Click.tv somehow instead of “letting them starve to death”? Paid a higher price because they could afford it, rather than buying a company for what it’s worth based on the fact that its own business model wasn’t working out?
Which, by the way, is an assumption I believe you’re making that hasn’t been made clear here (that Click.tv shutdown because things weren’t working out, and were then acquired). In fact, what Mike has quoted them as saying seems to indicate the exact opposite.
Click.tv did indeed sell to Cisco for somewhere in the $2-3 million dollar range. That is a fact.
Cisco have been promoting the Human Network concept for some time. In Europe at least, Cisco are having a bit of trouble contextualising this for sales guys on the ground. Put yourself in their shoes – so you’re in with your favourite client and you open up with “Seen our Human Network concepts – its all about second generation web techonology enabling greater interact than ever before….ummm….want to buy some bigger switches” If they have bought Click TV they are amassing an application set around the consumer that they will be reworking into business applications. Why not – its the natural extension of their core offering, if they just get the context right.
Very interesting. As said in the article, Cisco has some great acquisitions and it´s a very creative company so I trust in this project success.