Silicon Allely Insider; Dan Frommer | May 14, 2008 7:00 PM

Comcast (CMCSA), the largest U.S. cable company, is shelling out roughly $175 million for Plaxo, Reuters reports. Plaxo announced the deal on its blog but didn’t disclose the price.

What the heck is a cable company going to do with an address book/social network? Photo albums and TV recommendations! The company explains…

Plaxo and Comcast have been working together for the past year on a number of initiatives. Plaxo is providing the universal address book for Comcast’s SmartZone communications center (slated to launch later this year), and we are also now hosting all of the address book accounts for Comcast webmail users. Our partnership has already more than doubled the reach of the Plaxo network, bringing the total number of accounts to nearly 50 million.

Together, we intend to deliver on a vision of making “social media” a natural part of the lives of regular people, not just early-adopters. For example, you should be able to securely post family photos online in Pulse, and have them viewable by any of your family members, whether they are online, at work, on their mobile device, or in their living room watching TV. And you should be able to discover new shows to watch, based on what your friends and coworkers have recommended.

Plaxo will stay in Silicon Valley as a unit within Comcast Interactive Media, which also includes Fandango, Fancast, etc.

source : SAI

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