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Social Networking - Thursday, January 31, 2008

Hoover's Officially Launches Business Network With Buyout of Visible Path

D&B's Hoover's is buying Visible Path for an undisclosed amount. Foster City-based Visible Path sells social networking software for corporations to mine their connections for sales leads, recruiting and the like. Founded in 2004, Visible Path has raised just over $20M from Kleiner Perkins, Menlo Ventures, Silicon Valley Bank and Integral Capital.

The deal coincides with the official launch of Hoover’s Connect – a rebranding of Visible Path. If Hoover's doesn't F#*% this up, Hoover's Connect could be a viable alternative to LinkedIn. A number of reviewers say they liked Visible Path better than LinkedIn. A glaring weakness of LinkedIn is that you may have dozens of people on your list that your barely know or do business with but they sit next to your closest work mates. Visible Path by contrast includes an outlook plug-in that monitors who you email and then displays that they are indeed important to you.

VisiblePath connects with SugarCRM

View - Hoover's Connect