We shared the news of Cisco’s intent to acquire Socio in May and today, we’re excited to announce that the acquisition is now complete! Socio is officially part of Cisco.

We started Socio with the vision to transform how events and meetings are run around the world. In the four years since we began, the world has changed, no more so than in 2020.

The pandemic has changed how the world gathers, including the nature of events of all types and sizes. With millions of people unable to gather in person, having the right technology in place to power events and meetings became absolutely critical.

Socio started as an in-person event management solution, and at the onset of the pandemic, built an entire virtual event suite, and is now enabling the new hybrid future, where event organizers and marketers will have the opportunity to reach an expanded audience with engaging, immersive, and seamless events.

With virtual events, organizers can enjoy efficiencies of scale, allowing for larger audiences, greater 1:1 engagement, and more personalized experiences. With in-person events, organizers can provide face-to-face networking opportunities, focused time with target audiences and memorable experiences with the energy that only a physical event can bring.

Hybrid events present exciting new opportunities for meeting organizers, but also include some challenges that will require them to manage greater risk, complexity and cost associated with integrating different platforms, tools, and technologies from multiple vendors.  

Cisco and Socio together will further our shared vision of transforming the event industry, by creating the world’s first completely end-to-end hybrid event and meeting technology suite.

Joining the communications pioneer

For almost four decades, Cisco has been a pioneering company that shaped the Internet and communications as we know them today, including Webex, a leading provider of cloud-based collaboration solutions with nearly 600 million quarterly participants on average.

Socio, combined with Webex and Cisco’s recently acquired audience engagement technology from Slido, will allow event organizers to manage virtual, in-person, and hybrid events & meetings with a unified tech stack from one vendor. This single solution approach, combining best-of-breed event capabilities will enable event organizers and marketers to organize every type of event imaginable – internal, external, virtual, in-person, hybrid, small to large-scale. 

Socio shares Cisco’s sentiment that the future of events, like the future of work, will be hybrid and with that comes increased complexity for event managers to create inclusive, meaningful, and measurable interactions for both virtual and in-person attendees. Webex Events offers Webex powerful technology to provide customers with an unparalleled hybrid event management solution to engage participants whether they join in person or virtually.

Webex’s vision is to provide the most seamless, inclusive, engaging, and intelligent event & meeting attendee experience for everyone, regardless of location or device they use to join. Together, Webex, Slido, and Socio will create the most comprehensive event technology platform in the industry by combining the best solutions and technology that each of these companies has to offer including: 

  • Socio’s hybrid event technology platform that manages the full lifecycle of large-scale virtual, in-person, and hybrid events – from registration to post-event analytics. 
  • Webex’s cutting-edge virtual meeting innovations like background noise removal and speech enhancement, gesture recognition, immersive share, real-time translation, customized stage layouts, and more. 
  • Slido’s audience engagement capabilities like polling, trivia, and Q&A to make virtual meetings and events much more interactive and effective. 

Creating the new modern hybrid event technology ecosystem

Cisco Webex, combined with Socio and Slido, will provide a robust and modern event technology platform making it significantly easier for event organizers to host hybrid events.

Socio’s all-in-one event solution has everything you need to produce high-quality virtual, in-person, and hybrid events of all types and sizes. Features like highly customizable branded registration and inclusive experiences through mobile and web app feature parity allow attendees to view sessions, participate in audience engagement, and network regardless of where and how they participate. 

Additional benefits of Socio’s platform include advanced sponsorship capabilities, interactive networking, real-time analytics and reporting, and always-on, continuous engagement with attendees.

Socio will remain as a standalone platform

Cisco understands the value of supporting Socio as a standalone product, and for that reason, we will continue to provide our customers with the same top-rated service and support, and rapid innovation they have come to expect from us. The difference is now they will also benefit from the additional expertise, product integrations, and outstanding scale of Cisco.

We are delighted to join the Cisco Webex portfolio to continue our common goal of enabling seamless, personalized hybrid events of all sizes. Teaming up with Cisco gives us an amazing opportunity to apply our technology and expertise at an outstanding scale. We look forward to finding new ways to support the recovery and transition of the events industry

As always, we are grateful to all of you for being with us on our journey so far. We look forward to officially being part of Cisco as we work to create the future of events & meetings together!