Johnson & Johnson-owned BabyCenter wants to get hip, and gets on the social networking bandwagon. And to make that happen it has acquired Palo Alto-based niche social network, Maya’s Mom, reports PaidContent. (Disclosure: True Ventures is an investor in both GigaOM and Maya’s Mom.)

Rafat says that BabyCenter is shifting focus from e-commerce to content, and this acquisition is part of the strategy. Of course, this reinforces my thesis that social networking is a feature for other media services, unless you are a big kahuna like Facebook or MySpace.