Comcast to Acquire Plaxo

Comcast Corp. this week announced plans to acquire contact management company Plaxo. As a result, Comcast will add social networking functionality and other services to its websites: Comcast.net, Fancast.com and Fandango.com. The company's cable subscribers will, at some point, be able to access the social networking features through their set-top boxes and other cable-related devices. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

Plaxo enables users to stay connected by allowing them to automatically update their contact information through updates it sends to their friends' address books. Plaxo also runs Pulse, a social networking site.

According to news reports, Comcast has been focused on expanding the features of its Comcast.net site as part of an overall Internet expansion strategy.

This is a very interesting development, and it represents a merging of media types that could be a sign of things to come.

Comcast recognizes the strong and growing interest in social networking among consumers. And as social networking continues to engage people online, it's a smart move by Comcast to add such capabilities to its websites to draw people there. Of course, once people visit for the social networking aspects, the goal will be to keep them there to take advantage of Comcast's other online offerings.

Comcast, like most cable providers, have already been attempting to become all things to all people--as they have, in recent years, bundled television, phone and Internet services in one package for consumers. If it's successful, this Plaxo deal will further connect Comcast to customers seeking a "one-stop-shop" media services company.

ThomasNet Launches Purchasing Tools

ThomasNet has partnered with Source One Management Services LLC, a procurement service provider, to offer free purchasing tools for ThomasNet users. This new feature, ThomasNet's Purchasing Tools, will provide ThomasNet.com users with free access to request for information/proposal/quote (RFx) and reverse auction tools. This will enable buyers who don't have purchasing software to make their purchasing processes more efficiently. Source One CEO Steven Belli said in a company press release that user efficiency can be increased by 30 percent or more because of the tools.

According to ThomasNet, users can access the desktop tools for free and can incorporate them into their daily purchasing processes without training or the need to support software systems. Buyers who register on the MyThomas section of the ThomasNet site can access the tools.

How it works: Buyers use the tools to create and send requests for quotations and can then review and analyze sellers' information in a pre-set format. Other functionality includes single or multiple line item listings; the ability to upload unlimited attachments including specs, drawings, documents and presentations; multi-currency support; secure online storage of RFx events; and the ability to copy and re-run events in the future.

This announcement is going to make ThomasNet's advertising suppliers very happy. If it works as designed, it will make it even easier for ThomasNet users (buyers) to connect with them and make purchases. By simplifying the purchasing process, ThomasNet will make it a more appealing process as well, thus turning potentially hesitant buyers into actual buyers.

If anything, the improved functionality that these new tools represent will attract more users to the site overall.

Farlex Expands TheFreeDictionary.com Site With Multi-Lingual Offerings

Online reference publisher Farlex Inc. has added 13 new titles to its flagship website TheFreeDictionary.com. among those works are Mosby's Dictionary of Complementary and Alternative Medicine, Gale Encyclopedia of Medicine, Collins Spanish Dictionary & Grammar and Collins German Dictionary & Grammar. The expansion marks the introduction of non-English language resources in addition to the site's previous offerings of English reference works.

The site also features an audio tool that allows users to learn proper pronunciation by speaking the words aloud. The tool previously offered only American English pronunciations, but now lets users hear either American English or U.K. English pronunciations.

In addition to the Britannica Concise Encyclopedia and English, French, Spanish, German and Italian dictionaries, TheFreeDictionary.com features legal, computing, medical, veterinary, financial and scientific dictionaries as well as the Columbia, Wikipedia and Hutchinson Encyclopedias.

As the Internet brings people from different countries and cultures together, having such a multi-cultural and multi-lingual collection of reference works in one place makes perfect sense. For Farlex and TheFreeDictionary.com, this seems to be the ideal area for which to expand. It's certainly a great way for the company to celebrate its fifth anniversary.

If visitors of TheFreeDictionary.com were not a culturally and geographically diverse group of users before, they will most likely be now. Also likely is the addition of even more reference works to the site. Farlex, which also operates TheFreeDictionary.com, is certainly building a rather impressive stable of offerings, and it's undoubtedly a work in progress. The Farlex folks are scheduled to speak at our InfoCommerce 2008 conference this November in Philadelphia. They will probably have a lot more to talk about then.

SQAD To Launch CPM Tracking Service

Media forecaster SQAD announced it will launch its first Internet-oriented service, WebCosts, which will provide advertisers an average CPM per web property. SQAD will anonymously collect pricing data from advertising agencies and clients and use the data to calculate an average cost-per-thousand view for each web site. SQAD says that the data could serve as a negotiating tool for advertisers and publishers.

SQAD expects the service to officially launch during the third quarter of this year. The company already offers a similar service geared toward the broadcast media.

SQAD's goal with this new service is to create an industry standard that serves the buy and sell sides of the online advertising community. It expects to build an environment that will generate greater Internet advertising buys and provide a comfort level for both advertisers and publishers.

This is a rather ambitious idea, and will be interesting to see how the marketplace responds. Metrics, in general, are so crucial, and oftentimes difficult to get. If SQAD's solution can accurately provide relevant metrics for advertisers, it will garner considerable interest over time. But these can be tricky numbers to grasp. We'll have to wait and see how this initiative develops.

LinkedIn Expanding Into Europe

According to several media reports, social networking site LinkedIn is expanding its U.S. operations into the European market. LinkedIn apparently got the http://linkedin.co.uk domain recent made a hire to run advertising sales in its London office.

Part of LinkedIn's international expansion strategy is to bolster its targeted advertising program and promote is new product geared toward recruiters. Recruiter, is a collaborative human resources system that LinkedIn launched in February. It enables recruiters to search user profiles of individuals who have opted-in to such searches.

It's not surprising that LinkedIn is positioning itself for global expansion. It has already made such a strong impact in the U.S. market, that it's undoubtedly ready for more. The only real surprise is that it has taken this long for LinkedIn to make the international move.

Unlike its main competitors in the social networking space, MySpace and Facebook, LinkedIn appeals to a more professional audience--one that is most likely global in nature, or interested in networking on a global scale. Moving into London makes perfect sense since it doesn’t require translating LinkedIn's current site, making such an expansion rather quick and seamless. However, it won't be long before LinkedIn makes it way around the globe.