Cisco peddled social networking-based unified communications at today's opening of its C-Scape Global Forum 2007. While 2-year-olds used to out-execute their parents when it came to 
using the VCR, Cisco CEO John Chambers told the audience: ""The 40-year-olds will out-execute the 20-year-olds. You bring process to this." Company execs showed off WebEx Connect, which lets organizations create online spaces for collaboration. The product is in beta testing that is scheduled to ship in the first half of next year.
With WebEx Connect, employees can engage in text chats that stay up for future reference, describe problems and ask for ideas to fix them, create Facebook-style profile pages that others can search to find people with the expertise they need, and then check a contact's presence and engage them in a TelePresence session by clicking on their names.
Chambers also hinted at future developments in TelePresence, which the company unveiled about a year ago and has now sold for broad deployment in 100 large enterprises. He highlighted a "holographic" capability Cisco showed off in November at a meeting in Bangalore, India, and said he envisioned such a system for homes some day.
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