Comcast [1] is buying "social contact list" (i.e. Rolodex) company Plaxo [2], with a purchase price between $150 million and $170 million with the ambition to be the Facebook of video sharing.

In an interview with the New York Times, Comcast executive Samuel Schwartz ties in the acquisition of Plaxo with social media and the company's ambition to make more and more content available to consumers across all platforms (So long as P2P isn't involved ...). If you like an episode of your favorite TV show, you'll be able to (legally) share it with your friends, courtesy of Plaxo's technology and Comcast's video licensing agreements.

Before writing off Comcast as a little nuts, consider Cisco [3]'s dive into "visual networking" at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in January. Video is the engine of growth that the IP communications industry is betting on to generate more revenue per subscriber--as well as driving the sale of faster hardware and more bandwidth.

If this vision of social media video sharing is to be fully realized, there's likely to be collaboration between Plaxo and thePlatform, another Comcast acquisition. thePlatform is a digital media management company providing tools for posting, monitoring, and monetizing broadband content (i.e. audio and video).

Plaxo will operate largely independently, similar to thePlatform, so it can work with all the potential players as a true arms dealer should. The company had been working with Comcast over the past year on a number of projects, including a universal address book for Comcast's SmartZone communications center to launch later this year.

For more:
- NY Times blogs on the Comcast Plaxo Video [4] deal
- TechCrunch confirms Comcast Buying Plaxo [5]

Related articles:
Big four VoIP players [6] (Including Comcast) win 12 million users
Comcast defends P2P management [7] to FCC
Vuse complains about Comcast throttling [8]