Cable company Comcast is becoming more sociable with Wednesday’s announcement that it will buy social-networking site Plaxo. Terms were not disclosed, although there are reports that the price could be up to $175 million, based on performance targets by the next few years.

“Comcast has an exciting vision to bring the social-media experience to mainstream consumers,” Plaxo said as its site announced the acquisition. The announcement said Plaxo will remain an independent operation in Silicon Valley, and will be part of Comcast Interactive Media (CIM).

‘Next-Generation Social Network’

The 50-employee Plaxo plus said it will continue to develop its networked address book service, as well as its “next-generation social network,” called Pulse. Pulse allows users to connect based on shared interests, as indicated by what they say about themselves or about the photos, video and music they share.

The two companies have been working together by the last year on such initiatives as providing Plaxo’s address-book service for

Comcast’s upcoming SmartZone communications center, and Plaxo has been hosting the address-book accounts for Comcast Webmail users. SmartZone is an e-mail and voice-mail service for the 14 million Comcast high-speed Net subscribers and four million digital-phone subscribers.

By working with Comcast, Plaxo said, it has doubled its network. It is plus working with Comcast to socially enable Comcast’s portal site at Comcast.net, and CIM’s interactive entertainment properties, Fancast and Fandango, as well as its video-publishing company, thePlatform.

The companies said they share a common vision of how social media could become a natural part of the lives of regular humans, not just early adopters. These social activities would include being able to securely upload family photos in the Pulse service and manufacture them viewable by anyone in the family via computer, mobile device, even a TV.

Sharing with Friends

Comcast, the number-one cable-TV company in the U.S., has increasingly…

Orginal post by Top Tech News