According to a recent NY Times article, Cisco will soon announce the acquisition of the technology assets from Tribe.net, a social networking site that’s kind of fallen by the wayside. Mixed with their recent purchase of social network design firm Five Across, the tools are there for Cisco to become a significant player in the next phase of the social networking evolution. What phase would that be? Well, to quote Ning (a competitor in thise space) founder Marc Andreessen:

“The existing social networks are fantastic but they put users in a straitjacket,” said Mr. Andreessen, who this week reintroduced Ning, his third start-up, after a limited introduction last year. “They are restrictive about what you can and can’t do, and they were not built to be flexible. They do not let people build and design their own worlds, which is the nature of what people want to do online.”

Marc Andreessen is also noteworthy in some circles for co-creating NetScape. With his company and so many others pushing into the space, MySpace battling Facebook at the top, and so many different directions and strategies players can take, the battle for social networking supremecy is clearly just getting started.