Cisco acquired community-building startup Five Across last week for an undisclosed sum. In a press release, Cisco SVP Dan Scheinman said:

"With the acquisition of Five Across, Cisco is taking an important step towards helping its customers evolve their website experience into something more relevant and valuable to the end-user."

Andy Lark, formerly head of Sun's marketing efforts, questioned the fit with Cisco but noted:

I've always been impressed with what Five Across have been doing in creating communities for big brands. They have a platform that scales. Does this mean Cisco is getting into the Participatory Platforms business though? We'll have to wait and see.

We profiled Five Across' Bubbler product back in 2005. Since then, they had moved on to the current product, Connect Community Builder.

VoIPLoop's Sheila McGee-Smith notes of that effort:

The product we’re told can be used by businesses to extend their existing Web sites to include dynamic user-produced content, including audio and video materials, blogs, podcasts and profiles. One of the big customer references is the NHL, which in 2006 launched NHL Connect based on Five Across technology.

Those of us in the VoIPLoop community might think there could be synergy here with Cisco’s Unified Communications business. Apparently Cisco doesn’t think so. Organizationally, Five Across will report into the Cisco Media Solutions Group. That group is part of Cisco’s aggressive push into new markets that are more consumer-focused, such as video, home networking and even consumer electronics.