Cisco Eos Social Entertainment Platform Expands

Travel Channel, All Access Today and The Eleven Seven Music Group/Tenth Street Entertainment, Adopt Cisco Eos Platform to Power New Entertainment Web Sites

LAS VEGAS – January 6, 2010 – At the 2010 International Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas, Cisco today announced new customers, features and professional service options for the Cisco EosTM social entertainment platform.

Travel Channel, All Access Today and The Eleven Seven Music Group/Tenth Street Entertainment join Warner Music Group as customers deploying the fast-growing Cisco Eos platform.

Cisco also announced a new Eos partner ecosystem program and new Eos features, including Facebook Connect integration to facilitate audience acquisition; additional customization tools to enable rapid scaling of site launches; site migration tools to transition existing communities to Eos; and member group management capabilities to enhance engagement and monetization.

Cisco Eos is a hosted "software as a service" platform that enables Media & Entertainment companies to more economically create, manage and monetize social entertainment experiences built around their portfolios of branded content.
New Eos Customers:

* Travel Channel has adopted the Eos platform to deploy Web sites built around its portfolio of travel-related content and brands. Travel Channel Academy will publicly launch later this month as the network's first Eos-powered site. Taking advantage of Eos's profile-building and contribution features, Travel Channel Academy fosters a community around aspiring travel journalists and the content they produce.
* All Access Today has started deploying sites for artists such as Willie Nelson, The Gorillaz, Peter Gabriel, Sugarland, JLS, and Colbie Caillat. All Access Today announced that a new, Eos-powered fan site with an integrated fan club for music legend Willie Nelson will launch later this month through http://willienelson.com. Additional sites will publicly launch in the coming months, including a micro-site with digital and physical merchandise offerings for www.petergabriel.com
* The Eleven Seven Music Group/Tenth Street Entertainment is using the Eos platform to super-serve the music management and record group's artists and their fans by providing exceptional up- to-the-moment online experiences. They will launch sites for Nikki Sixx (Mötley Crüe/Sixx:A.M.) and Rock & Roll Hall of Famers Blondie. These will be followed by other sites from amongst the marketing and content creation companies' roster which includes Aerosmith's Steven Tyler, Mötley Crüe, Buckcherry, Papa Roach, JET, Drowning Pool and more. As they build their social network, rock fans will have the opportunity to interact with and receive special content from their favorite artists, as well as be the first to be introduced to new music.

New Eos Features:

Cisco announced the availability of Eos 2.0, which includes features such as:

* Facebook Connect integration to make it easier for consumers to share content with their friends, and to facilitate audience acquisition for media companies.
* Member group management capabilities to enable media companies to create and manage user groups (such as "Professionals", "Fans", "VIPs" etc) with tiered or special access to premium content or features. This special access can be used to incent user behavior and deliver monetization opportunities such fan clubs, content subscriptions and exclusive offers.
* Site migration tools to easily and cost effectively transition content, data and users from other software solutions to the Eos platform.
* Integration with several advertising serving and management providers to provide easy advertising implementations to media companies.
* Advanced customization capabilities including a module-building toolkit that enables media companies to modify or create their own site functionality on Eos-powered sites.
* A suite of highly secure, public application programming interfaces (APIs) to enable media companies to integrate third-party applications with Eos to achieve business goals, particularly around creating consumer insight.

In addition, Cisco unveiled initial steps that will be core development areas for the platform in 2010:

* Advanced audience analytics to empower content owners with data to acquire, understand, segment, and target their audiences and optimize premium content experiences.
* Ability to launch localized site experiences to international audiences on the platform.

Introduction of the Cisco Eos Partner Program:

* Cisco also announced the launch of the Cisco Eos Partner Program, an ecosystem program that gives customers access to pre-qualified 3rd parties offering services that can help manage, extend or enhance the entertainment experiences built on the Cisco Eos platform.
o Qualified partners have demonstrated expertise in their service categories and an ongoing commitment to training and development on the Eos platform. The initial categories of services in the program include: Website design, Website development and deployment; and Operations and management.
* The inaugural partners of the Cisco Eos Partner Program include Hot Studio, The Wonder Factory, HCL and Infosys. Additional partners and service categories will be announced in the future.

Source: Cisco