Valley Buzz: Cisco Gets Up in HP's Grill, Lenovo Seeks Netbook/Phone Zen, Mobile Internet Usage Soars, and Coke Learns the Secret of Web 2.0

Cisco Systems is hoping that taking virtualization to the data center will open up a whole new market for the company, huge cost savings for customers, and impinging on the turf of two tech giants it formerly counted as partners. Well, maybe that last one wasn’t intentional, indeed, Cisco downplayed it on its corporate blog.

But analysts and journalists saw the new product announcement as a clear shot across the bow at former partner Hewlett Packard and IBM in the war to bring virtualization to corporate data centers. Some analysts also called it a “big risk” since Cisco doesn’t know much about the server business. Meanwhile, GigaOm asks the question of whether more and more cloud computing and virtualization is saving customers money at the expense of IT jobs.

Will it be a really small netbook or just a really big iPhone? That’s what everyone wondered last week, as the Apple rumor mill presaged a new device to bridge the divide between a laptop and a phone. Lenovo continues to blur the line this week with teasing images of something called a “Pocket Yoga.” Check out the last picture on this link. Sure, my laptop doesn’t fit in my pocket but this one barely fits. It reminds me of products that try to do too much and please no one. Time will tell if big phone/tiny computer devices fulfill some great consumer desire or just prove to occupy a no-man’s land of consumer spending. Let us know your predictions in the comments.

Speaking of Internet-enabled-devices that can almost fit in your pocket, new stats by comScore show that the number of people using the Web from mobile devices has more than doubled in the last year, and 35% of them surfed the mobile Web daily. The researchers cited blogging, social networking, and downloadable applications as catalysts. Of course, Silicon Alley Insider was quick to throw water on the whole thing, noting that most Americans still don’t use the mobile Web. In fact, it’s just 10% of all mobile subscribers going online from phones daily. If you ask me, 10% of all U.S. handsets is still a pretty large number, especially given the fact that we only recently got a decent browser user experiences on phones. (Thanks,Steve Jobs!)

Lastly, the Net has been buzzing with a new secret formula Coke has discovered: How to market successfully on Facebook without spending a dime. The answer: Have absolutely nothing to do with it. It seems the Coke fan page on Facebook has the second most friends after Barack Obama. And Coke didn't have anything to do with it; it was created by a couple genuine fans of the sugared water and inexplicably took off. Coke may not know why it worked, but they want it to keep on working. When a new Facebook rule that stated only people associated with a brand could set up a fan page, Coke jumped at the chance to authorize it so Facebook wouldn’t shut it down. Let it be a lesson to other brands: The way to get people to align themselves with your brand is to make a product they love.