Cisco gets into the social network business with Quad

Does the world really need another business social network? Apparently Cisco thinks so, because it plans to release one later this year. The company has been revealing more details of the new product, called Quad, in advance of a demonstration Tuesday at the Enterprise 2.0 conference in Boston. As described by Murali Sitaram, vice president and general manager of the company’s enterprise collaboration platform group, Quad takes advantage of Cisco’s existing strength in voice and video communication — he said it seems like a “natural transition or next step to get into the new collaboration world with content, documents, communication, and social coming together on this platform.” Quad will be the first social network combining “asynchronous” communication, like status updates and microblogging, with more direct, immediate communication through tools like live video, Sitaram said. For example, if you find someone available in the network with knowledge that’s useful for your project, you can start a video chat or a web conference with them right away, rather than sending a message and waiting for a response.

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Cisco gets into the social network business with Quad