Technical information provider IHS increased its presence in the aerospace, defense and security space with this week's acquisition of Jane's Information Group, an information provider that services the defense industry and government markets with content, insight and analysis. It will be folded into IHS brands, including CERA (Cambridge Energy Research Associates). IHS issued 4,399 million shares of new IHS common stock in exchange for Jane's.

Both IHS and Jane's have strong market positions in aerospace, defense and government. IHS is known for its military and aerospace parts, standards and regulatory databases as well as decision-support tools and services. Jane's brings expertise in insight and analysis.

This is certainly a smart move by IHS, which noted in a company release announcing the deal its intention to strengthen its proprietary content and decision-support tool offerings. By acquiring Jane's, IHS has taken ownership of an organization with a rich history and strong position in the marketplace. Combined, IHS and Jane's will create an even more powerful provider of aerospace, defense and security solutions for its customers seeking that ever important combination of content, insight and analysis. Jane's will definitely integrate smoothly into IHS's operations as it helps the company become a more complete solutions provider within these industries.

Competition in the social networking space just got a bit more intense. Through a partnership with ZoomInfo, Germany-based social networking site now boasts a network larger than LinkedIn. The partnership enables Xing members to access basic information from ZoomInfo's database of 36 million business profiles, which is considerably larger than LinkedIn's membership of 11 million.

For $5 a month, Xing members can upgrade to a premium account to be able to contact ZoomInfo people they don't already share a network with. The premium account status also enables them to update their profiles on ZoomInfo. This is similar to LinkedIn, which offers a premium membership to people who want to directly contact people outside of their network.

Your network is only as good as your contact information. Where LinkedIn is strong is in the accuracy of its information. It comes directly from the sources and individuals who want to take full advantage of the networking site's ability to connect people religiously update their profiles. Through this recently announced alliance, Xing is relying on content from ZoomInfo to power much of its network, which may or may not be a good idea. ZoomInfo is certainly good at what it does--culling information from a variety of Web sources to create profiles of business professionals. However, that information is only as good as its original sources. And sometimes those sources just don't have the most up-to-date information--a key factor when business professionals are seeking to connect with each other.

So while Xing can now proclaim to have a larger network, it must remember that quantity doesn't equal quality. If anything, LinkedIn will be motivated to continue to bolster its offerings as other organizations likely attempt to take a piece of the increasingly popular social networking pie.