Thursday, May 15, 2008

Comcast Poised to Become Cross-media Powerhouse

Look out web media companies -- Comcast is coming. The cable giant is continuing its empire building with the acquisition of social site Plaxo.  Plaxo enables people to create a single home page that pulls in content from any and all of their social sites.

Comcast wants to take the social interaction for finding people and sharing content to the set-top box, and the Plaxo acquisition is a big step in that direction. Comcast would like people to spend more time in front of the TV rather than at the keyboard to reverse the current trend.

Based on the acquisitions and strategies exhibited during the past year, Comcast is the most likely company to be able to span the TV to PC media bridge and "own" users in both environments. I'm surprised that Google or Time Warner aren't doing more in this respect to keep up.

Update: I just saw that CBS acquired CNET for $1.8 billion. CBS has been aggressive in integrating TV content online, but this deal is a bit of a head scratcher. I would never have made a connection between the Survivor/CSI crowd and tech publishing, but CBS wanted more of an internet presence. Perhaps they will retool CNET as more of a media and entertainment company beyond the tech box using its existing infrastructure. Weird.

Posted By John Gartner at 09:35 AM
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