Visible Path said to be bought

December 4, 2007 | Matt Marshall | Comments | |

updated
visiblepathlogo.pngVisible Path, a Silicon Valley start-up that offers companies a way for their employees to how their personal contacts are linked to others in their organization and elsewhere, has been bought by a multibillion, international company, according to this CNET article.

Visible Path has remained focused on serving companies — even as more popular consumer-focused networks such as LinkedIn, and now Facebook, have grabbed attention. It’s not clear whether Visibile Path was making money (we wrote about the company here, when it changed its chief executive a few months ago, and started shaking itself up a bit). The news comes as companies get more serious about providing social software to their employees.

We reported earlier about how News Corp. is negotiating to buy LinkedIn.

Visible Path’s service tracks how often you email certain people, how frequently those people respond, and then builds a ranking of your richest contacts, and shows you how those contacts, in turn, are connected with others. It lets you know which of your contacts you can draw on to help reach someone else you might not otherwise know.

Visible Path was working away for years. It was very early to the sector, but wasn’t able to exploit is as quickly as others have. It was backed with $22,7 million from Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, Menlo Ventures, and Integral Capital Partners.

Update: This version corrected an earlier version that suggested Pringo had acquired Visible Path. That information was clearly wrong.

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  • Ryan
    Well more or less its the same as Linkedin. But Linkedin you have unlimited contacts but whereas with the other probably it would restrict to only the particular company. Linkedin is pretty cool & very professional as well. It helps you grow your network, contacts. Now there this site called MoDazzle through which you can access Linkedin on mobile without internet.
    http://modazzle.com/cms/modazzleLp1.html?channe...
  • Yes....as part of the management team here at Pringo, I was suprised to hear we had purchased another company...thanks for the correction as we got a few calls about this.