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Microsoft to acquire LinkedIn for $26B
- abpavel 10y agoThe last gasp. Just like Yahoo with tumblr. When a corporate behemoth has a dream of transformation, they rather just buy that dream than to actually undergo transformation themselves.
- simonswords82 10y agoYahoo were borderline negligent with that purchase. I suspect the shareholders and board at Microsoft have a much better idea of what they're planning to do to monetise Linked In.
- spriggan3 10y ago> Yahoo were borderline negligent with that purchase That's not what most HNers were saying at that time, they were praising Mayer and her "awesome strategy" of shopping her way into success. Of course it didn't make sense at all, like that deal makes very little sense at all too.
- simonswords82 10y agoWow - I decided to look up the thread from when the acquisition was announced and I'm shocked at how positive the news was taken by the HN crowd: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5737185 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5737185 Looks like we've got an army of Captain Hindsight's here now given I never hear anybody defend the purchase on HN now it clearly is a flop. Furthermore Forbes wrote an article on why the acquisition was a bad idea, and HNers beat it up! https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5737400 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5737400
- ac2u 10y agoDoes this mean clippy is going to start offering me jobs?
- gloves 10y agoIf clippy makes a return, I for one back this move.
- cm2187 10y agoI was already very upset with the direction Windows 10 was taking in term of privacy. Now Microsoft wants to be big in social network. I hate to say that but it is really time to ditch Windows.
- selmat 10y agoAnother account which will be forcibly connected with ms credentials. Opportunity to collect another sensitive information in an effort to create "better UX".
- gloves 10y agoWorked well for Google +...
- lloyd-christmas 10y agoSounds like Microsoft is going the Yahoo route.
- l3m0ndr0p 10y agoOh Boy. Congrats to MS, but my days are numbered on that site now.
- _yosefk 10y agoSkype, Nokia, Minecraft, LinkedIn. Also Yahoo, almost, at one point. Best of luck to Microsoft with its latest acquisition. It doesn't look that sensible though.
- verytrivial 10y agoDoes anyone have a reference to even some wild speculation as to what Microsoft gets out of for their own business? Or is this just somewhere to park some cash? I am honestly confused.
- wastedhours 10y agoMore connections to enterprise, potential for some cloud HR play, a ready-established pseudo social network to compete with Facebook for Work (maybe as part of a Yammer, Office365, Skype for Business play), st-tonne of user data, SlideShare...
- dforrestwilson 10y agoI'm still confused. If someone is shopping for a job on LinkedIn, do they want their employer to know that? Isn't there some risk of trust violation? Why would I want to take my online resume and hand it out around work? I just don't get the synergy plays here. They all feel like a very expensive moonshot.
- wastedhours 10y agoI connect with colleagues, even my manager when I was at my previous job, even though I found my current role on there. But, think about it from the current plays - they have the work connections (organic "company graph"), the user's skills, your current job details (think about both of those as being an HR play), a learning platform (Lynda, but think of that as internal training/cloud qualifications), industry/enterprise trend information (can dive into the data of all of the roles and build products based on predicting market requirements). Slap on Pulse and SlideShare as publishing and an established (and probably growing) revenue hose from Recruiter and it makes some sense.
- satysin 10y agoHoly fuck that is a lot of money. How on earth is LinkedIn worth anywhere near that?!
- Wei-1 10y agoLinkedIn is doing well man. Why Microsoft did this is another question.
- justaman 10y agoBecause they already own the "Office". They want you to integrate your Outlook\Exchange with Linked in.
- dcgoss 10y agoTook the words out of my mouth.
- 2close4comfort 10y agoI would like to second this thought! Even with ad money HOW?!?@?#? But on the other hand this does feel right, Linkedin does feel like the Microsoft of Social Networking.
- gloves 10y ago"The Microsoft of Social Networking" Love it.
- oblio 10y agoUnlike Snapchat or Instagram, which could very likely turn into MySpace 2.0 or 3.0, Linkedin is actually very entrenched in its market.
- curiousgal 10y agoWhat market is exactly that? I still have no idea what Linkedin is all about. Edit: Yes, keep downvoting me, asking questions about LinkedIn clearly doesn't add to the discussion. sigh
- justinholmes 10y agoAnother nokia.....
- flashm 10y agoHere's looking forward to my Hotmail account email address being accidentally 'shared' with LinkedIn and the never-ending LinkedIn spam returning.
- nevi-me 10y agoI hope this will usher in an era of less unethical behaviour from the company under new leadership. Congratulations to shareholders. Anyone know why they'd negotiate an all cash settlement?
- flyinghamster 10y agoI'm not so hopeful. Given that Microsoft pulled out every dark pattern in the book for Windows 10, I can only think things will get worse.
- simonswords82 10y agoJust because one team on Windows 10 made a huge mistake doesn't mean the entirety of Microsoft is full of people looking to fill the world with dark patterns. They employ about 50,000 engineers last time I checked...
- cm2187 10y agoI don't think it was a "mistake" by an isolated team. I don't think the Windows team would change that fundamentally Microsoft's core product without the management's OK.
- simonswords82 10y agoI agree that a manager somewhere in the organisation did OK this change but that's one person. I don't believe he or she is representative of the hundred thousand people that Microsoft employ.
- exception_e 10y agoI hope they do a rewrite/redesign of the frontend.
- paride5745 10y agoFrom Scala to .Net?
- exception_e 10y agoNo I'm talking about the user interface and user experience.
- paride5745 10y agoJokes aside, I would really like a UI/UX inspired by outlook.com and the other MS web apps.
- idobai 10y ago"Loading... The website doesn't respond. Do you want to restart?"
- interdrift 10y agoYeah, if they roll out the Azure theme I would be incredibly happy!
- mckee1 10y agoIt'll be interesting to see how they integrate LinkedIn with Yammer (if they do at all). Particularly with the launch of Facebook at Work recently too.
- GabrielF00 10y agoWhat is Microsoft hoping to gain from this?
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- blahi 10y agoSkype for business button on LI profiles. More stickiness for o365. Data for Dynamics. People assume CRM here, and I tend to agree, but I wouldn't discount the ERP/supply-chain management software play. Microsoft seems to be more interested in manufacturing than marketing. Slide share integration for PowerPoint/O365. More stickiness. Lynda.com - increasing developer pool for C#/Xamarin, which in turn means more stickiness for Visual Studio, Azure, Windows and SQL Server, Dynamics families, SharePoint. Lynda.com - increasing user base for productivity software. Lynda.com - future play for HR training both content and technology. A truckload of content.
- ivoras 10y agoOh, I can just imagine how the process went at MS: * Exec A: Social things are Good (coming to the conclusion about 10 years too late) * Exec B: Shall we create our own Google+? * Exec C: No, that didn't turn out that well for Google. Let's buy something existing. * Exec B: Ok, I've Googled a list of top 10 social networking sites for sale, and ordered them by list price, but really we'll need to come up with a strategy first to make a good choice... * Exec A: Booooring. Let's just buy the cheapest one and be done with it. What's the worst which could happen? Gimme a bonus. To be honest, they're probably buying the users, not the product.
- moondowner 10y agoMicrosoft actually created their own social network: http://www.so.cl/ http://www.so.cl/ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/So.cl https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/So.cl And Microsoft bought Yammer - an "enterprise social network for businesses".
- mrcwinn 10y agoActually, I suspect a lot of honest thought and debate went into spending $20 billion, but who knows.
- nailer 10y agoI imagine it was more like: - Microsoft has the money - LinkedIn is the biggest thing in recruiting (I don't especially like it either, but it is). I wouldn't personally hire someone via recruiters or LinkedIn, but I would hire someone via a recomendation from a contact I maintain on LinkedIn. - Microsoft makes business tools - There's a bunch of interesting opportunities for intrgating Dynamics, Yammer, and other MS tools with LinkedIn. Actually looking forward to MS's UX folk cleaning up LinkedIn. Edit: Nadella said re: how MS looks at acquisitions (http://www.theverge.com/2016/6/13/11920306/microsoft-ceo-satya-nadella-linkedin-memo http://www.theverge.com/2016/6/13/11920306/microsoft-ceo-sat...) "Is this asset riding secular usage and technology trends?" - anyone know what that means?
- minimaxir 10y agoWhy would Microsoft release a major M&A announcement at 8:35 AM EST / 5:35 AM PST? It's not even the professional workday yet!
- goldenkey 10y agoThe market opens at 9 and traders are usually up earlier to get ready for the high opening volume..
- maxerickson 10y agoBecause trading opens at 9:30. They probably finished the deal over the weekend. E: And it could well be the case that they had planned to announce it yesterday but chose not to because of the Orlando shootings.
- dforrestwilson 10y agoAs others have stated, this is about prepping the debt markets. They have to sell the deal to potential bond investors.
- andylynchnz 10y agoTo get the news out without disrupting the markets - it's fairer to allow people to see news like this while the instrument is not trading.
- lloyd-christmas 10y agoAs a prior equities trader, these were our year-makers if it happened during trading hours.
- shostack 10y agoCan you elaborate on this for a non-trader?
- lloyd-christmas 10y ago
- adamqureshi 10y agoPIF Reid Hoffman (Paid in FULL) ;-)
- ipedrazas 10y agoOne word: Clippy
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- wjoe 10y agoIt looks like you're writing a resume! Would you like to set your LinkedIn status to "Looking for work?"
- dded 10y agoExcept this time Clippy's serving ads. And my documents/presentations/spreadsheets are going to be cross-referenced with Linked-In? Sounds like a mechanism to put me one click away from accidentally sending sensitive info to someone working for a competitor. Nothing about this sounds "delightful" to me. It sounds intrusive and risky.
- Eclyps 10y agoDo many people use Yammer? The company that I'm with tried it a few years back and it just wasn't useful for us. I wonder if they will end up merging Yammer, or at least some Yammer features, into LinkedIn at some point.
- 2close4comfort 10y agoComing from a company that uses Yammer if it does get Yammer I am totally out and I mean it this time linkedin!
- Touche 10y agoIt's essentially unchanged since they bought it. I think all they really did was put Yammer notifications in Outlook. I wouldn't be surprised if LinkedIn turns out the same way. They had to write off the Nokia deal (over 7 billion I believe), this might be the next one of those.
- zaroth 10y agoI think their ability to write-off most of the $26b in a couple years must be a defining feature of the whole transaction. I.e. "Oh well, at least the Fed is paying for half of it!"
- Jaruzel 10y agoThey also updated Sharepoint to support Yammer integration and made it part of the default Office365 offering.
- twoarrays 10y agoThis is huge for the technology ecosystem. More and more, we're seeing the consolidation of ever growing organizations and slow death of smaller companies.
- lujim 10y agoCongrats to anyone who was holding LinkedIn stock. Microsoft's bid of $196 per share has LNKD up $63 bucks a share or 48% in premarket. Edit: Also a cautionary tale for anyone shorting a stock that fundamentally sucks but could be a buyout target. Use options instead!
- colinbartlett 10y agoPerhaps congrats on the loss and write down if you bought above $196. Looks like LNKD traded north of $200 for a good portion of the last 2 years.
- lujim 10y agoOuch, I knew it took a big hit after dismal earnings and guidance last time (or two) but thought it had recovered a bit. Congrats on breaking even then I guess to anyone holding since Feb.
- Idontreddit 10y ago> Congrats to anyone who was holding LinkedIn stock. Microsoft's bid of $196 per share has LNKD up $63 bucks a share or 48% in premarket Or tough luck to those who bought LNKD at $258 a few months ago and held on...
- artursapek 10y agoThe calls on LNKD are looking pretty sweet http://i.imgur.com/EMdaiMO.png http://i.imgur.com/EMdaiMO.png
- jacquesm 10y agoWonder how many people will use this as an opportunity to either create a linkedin profile or to delete the one they already have. Change-of-control risks on a deal like this are substantial. This is also an excellent reminder that you never know where the profiles you create will end up.
- ElijahLynn 10y agoYeah, I am debating closing mine today.
- SuperKlaus 10y agoYou better hurry before Microsoft removes that "feature".
- ElijahLynn 10y agoLOL, sounds like it won't be until the end of the year for the deal to have a chance to succeed, and only then will Microsoft get the LinkedIn keys. So I think I will wait until the deal has a better chance of closing.
- orik 10y agoI deleted mine two years back but am trying to get a job at MSFT around august, so I suppose I should now make one, huh?
- prajjwal 10y agoI'm genuinely curious as to what makes LinkedIn worth that much. On the surface it just looks like Microsoft is trying to commit suicide. As as aside, how many startups in Silicon Valley are rushing to up their spam game in the wake of this? :)
- f1nch3r 10y agoAt least Microsoft will be able to tout the inability to delete a LinkedIn profile as a feature and not a bug.
- BugsBunnySan 10y agoWell, there goes that neighbourhood.
- dadafoo 10y agoThe internet is becomming more and more like real world businesses. We're going to be left with four or so big companies. Facebook, Google, Microsoft. Yahoo Twitter e.t.c will be swallowed up next.
- te_chris 10y agoALL CASH. Holy fuck.
- jackweirdy 10y agoI bet the wire transfer gets held up for being potentially fraudulent because it's so big. I'd love to be the call centre worker who picks up that call.
- harryh 10y ago196/share is roughly what LNKD was trading at before their very bad earnings report in February. FWIW.
- maxerickson 10y agoSomewhat more info in the press release: http://news.microsoft.com/2016/06/13/microsoft-to-acquire-linkedin/ http://news.microsoft.com/2016/06/13/microsoft-to-acquire-li...
- michaf 10y agoThat makes $60.5 per user. Compared to other social networks this seems to be within a reasonable range.
- janvdberg 10y agoAdd that one to the list: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mergers_and_acquisitions_by_Microsoft#Acquisitions https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mergers_and_acquisitio... Looking trough the list this is probably the biggest acquisition for Microsoft (in monetary value). All-cash transaction nonetheless.
- icc97 10y agoIt's the 196th purchase that they bought at $196 / share. Somebody was having a laugh in the Finance department.
- ckastner 10y agoFor reference, IPO in May 2011 was for $45/share, and they closed at $94.25 on the first day for a total market cap of $9bn, according to this [1] source. [1] http://money.cnn.com/2011/05/19/technology/linkedin_IPO/ http://money.cnn.com/2011/05/19/technology/linkedin_IPO/
- JumpCrisscross 10y agoIf you bought into the IPO in May, you'd have realised a 33% compound annual growth rate (CAGR). [1] (196 / 45) ^ (1 / numberOfYearsSinceMay2011==5.118) - 1
- joshvm 10y agoThe share price hasn't exactly been rosy recently, so at least the shareholders have something to look forward to. http://markets.ft.com/research/Markets/Tearsheets/Summary?s=LNKD:NYQ http://markets.ft.com/research/Markets/Tearsheets/Summary?s=... http://www.reuters.com/article/linkedin-results-research-idUSKCN0VE1N0 http://www.reuters.com/article/linkedin-results-research-idU...
- kozhevnikov 10y agoLinkedIn owns Lynda, but Microsoft (MSDN) partnered with Pluralsight, interesting how that will play out.
- bogomipz 10y agoWell both of those are underwhelming in terms of both content and user experience.
- vcjohnson 10y agoI've had no experience with Lynda but what's underwhelming about PS? It definitely seems to lack of depth in a lot of courses but provides a good overview/refresher on things in my experience.
- bogomipz 10y agoAs you mentioned lack of depth is the larger one, but also the rate at which they add new content is not exactly great. Lastly they tend to reuse the same author's for certain subjects which creates a lack of diversity in the teaching. These last two are common to both Lynda and Pluaralsight. At $25.00 and $30.00/month this is one of the highest priced subscription services on the internet and as such you would expect much more from them.
- vcjohnson 10y agoYeah I'll admit I hadn't considered lack of instructor diversity. Subscription fees are thankfully paid for by my employer so it's not a huge issue for me personally but I could understand how that would be difficult to justify for individuals.
- redwards510 10y agoIf you know of a better resource for software development training materials, please name it so I can make my employer pay for it.
- dec0dedab0de 10y agoHere's hoping Microsoft keeps up it's recent good guy persona, and starts actively identifying and removing dark patterns from LinkedIn.
- pbhjpbhj 10y ago/sarcasm?
- dec0dedab0de 10y agoNo, I'm serious. I'm not a big MS fan, but they've been doing some good things lately. Hopefully they can make LinkedIn feel less scummy.
- pbhjpbhj 10y agoPrior to forcing people's computers to move to Win 10 and using scummy badware tactics (close the dialog to install, no "do not install" option) I'd have agreed; MS looked like they were reforming.
- wslh 10y agoIf I use Skype acquisition as a guide we can expect advertisements all over the site very soon.
- elcapitan 10y ago"Your career doesn't seem to respond anymore. Do you want to restart it now?"
- brianwawok 10y ago* You haven't changed jobs in 3 years, sending out 40 applications for you. You are welcome. - Same team that did Windows 10 autoupdate
- tajen 10y ago"Sent your resignation letter" seems like the more appropriate action.
- forgotAgain 10y agoThis is your enterprise agreement bot: We've noticed that 83% of your IT department has employment applications out with other enterprise customers. Here is the list of names and what they are looking for in future employment.
- opticalflow 10y agoWOW, well-played, sir, very well played indeed. I may have to steal your snark.
- opticalflow 10y agoWhile the downvotes are cute, why punish giving credit where credit is due? I thought their quote was very clever, and worthy of drawing attention to. Just saying.
- aNoob7000 10y agoI'm not sure what Microsoft is getting with LinkedIn for $26bn. I know it is a little crazy, but I think they would have been better off buying Redhat for $15bn or Canonical (Ubuntu linux) for even cheaper.
- dexterdog 10y agoThey still could. They do have a bit of cash.
- Sylos 10y agoI think, they just haven't bought those yet, because they could get a monopolization lawsuit for that. Red Hat and Canonical are among their biggest competitors in the OS market, as small as they are.
- pmontra 10y agoThey're already doing the Ubuntu on Windows thing with Canonical, no need to buy them yet. Wait at least for the Extend phase.
- levesque 10y agoBuying Canonical would be very unwise. I'm pretty sure user rates would drop like hell on the day of the announcement. I know I would change my distro.
- pjc50 10y agoThat would attract truly unprecedented levels of hostility and a declaration of war by segments of the Linux community.
- vidarh 10y agoProbably. On the other hand, Redhat kind of pulled up the drawbridge and focused on parts of the market that don't care so much with the RHEL / Fedora change. Of the major Linux distributions, I think Redhat is the one whose userbase would be least likely to be upset. A few years back it'd have been totally unthinkable, but today, given that MSFT has surprised repeatedly with a more friendly approach towards the open source community, and given that Redhat - while still contributing a lot - has pulled back in a sense, it would be less problematic. Wouldn't be trivial to pull off, by any means, though. I think if MS would like to pick up a major Linux vendor, they'd better spend a year and lots of money buttering up the community with more open source releases and PR first.
- vermontdevil 10y agoOh wow. This purchase does not make any sense. What benefit does LinkedIn bring to Microsoft? Wouldn't surprise me another competitor will emerge and replace LinkedIn. It's time anyway with their annoying spamming of late.
- simonswords82 10y agoImagine you're one of the biggest companies in the world. On from that imagine you could afford to buy one of the most comprehensive CRMs in the world and all the lovely data it holds. In addition to the fringe benefits, if Microsoft use this purchase intelligently they'll reap serious rewards from it. (I fucking hate Linked In, but I think it's a legit purchase for Microsoft)
- vermontdevil 10y agoTrue - I can see them using this purchase to sell more cloud services by mining the data for connections.
- bede 10y agoPerhaps LinkedIn will use fewer evil antipatterns now that its ownership has something resembling a reputation to uphold.
- gloves 10y agoUnsure if you're being serious... don't need to look much further than Windows 10 auto update to see how much Microsoft care...
- simonswords82 10y agoMicrosoft employs fifty thousand engineers. A group of them fucked up with that Windows 10 debacle. I reckon on the whole Microsoft very much do care about their reputation.
- Jommi 10y agoOr they could just not change anything and the majority of people won't associate the antipatterns with the Microsoft brand a tall
- tremon 10y agoSo you're arguing that it was just "a rogue employee" that made that decision and executed it?
- simonswords82 10y agoNo, I'm saying that a group of individuals in the company made the decision, including managers and perhaps senior execs. It was not a board level decision, at least imo.
- r2dnb 10y ago> A group of them fucked up with that Windows 10 debacle I don't think that the auto-update feature was introduced by a "group of developers". This was purely board of directors driven.
- 10y ago
- adellee 10y ago" Will continue to operate independently ". Why do they even say that. Microsoft didn't pay 20billion for a passive investment. Such a silly thing to say.
- cjblomqvist 10y agoA huge database which can be utilized for sales. Who to talk to with what profile, which kind of approach is likely to work, and so forth. A great opportunity for some data mining folks!
- seren 10y agoI am actually surprised there are no anti-trust kind of law that are kicking in. I guess this is just a case no one thought that would be an issue at some point (or is it really?).
- deeringc 10y agoRight, but 26 Billion! Something doesn't add up.
- pieter_mj 10y agoWhat I never get with these huge acquisitions is what about the user's privacy? They never agreed with Microsoft to have their data but somehow ms automatically gets access to it?
- mcintyre1994 10y agoStraight from the privacy policy: "If there is a change in control or sale of all or part of LinkedIn, we may share your information with a third party, who will have the right to use that information in line with this Privacy Policy." So not Microsoft specifically but they did agree LinkedIn could transfer their data to any buyer.
- ebbv 10y agoBetween Windows constantly pestering and even trying to trick me to upgrade to Windows 10 and getting LinkedIn requests from people I've only ever met once this is truly a match made in hell.
- FLUX-YOU 10y agoWindows 10 LinkedIn Edition Update your LinkedIn profile with shell context menus!
- padobson 10y agoLinkedIn closed public trading on Friday at ~131 per share. This deal represents a $196 per share price - so anyone that purchased on Friday is looking at ~50% ROI. Is this the best non-Facebook ROI for a social network that's been available to the public markets?
- Termana 10y agoSatya Nadella has made a bold final attempt to stop LinkedIn from spamming him
- x5n1 10y ago"Bill Gates is awaiting your reply."
- njloof 10y agoNaah, they'll just make him a default, like Tom on MySpace.
- vidarh 10y agoWon't work. Instead LinkedIn will now infect the OS team, and before you know it you'll get LinkedIn notifications during boot.
- jfim 10y ago2 people want to add you to their professional network on LinkedIn. Abort, Retry, Fail?
- tajen 10y agoBullies buying bullies.
- bkmn 10y agoInfinite upvote!
- DannyBee 10y agoYou have this wrong. This is how microsoft plans on spamming the remainder of people to upgrade to windows 10
- purbitaditecha 10y agokullu the mullu sacking
- spydum 10y agojust my own prediction.. msft will attempt to replatform the entire stack onto Azure, making heavy use of their Azure platform services as a way to show how scalable they are (sort of the same play they made with hotmail decades ago).
- gtirloni 10y agoThat's a very safe and sure bet. Why it would go any other way would be really puzzling.
- chrshawkes 10y agoWill they also rewrite it from Node to .NET core?
- gloves 10y agoGenuine question... what do MS stand to gain from this?
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- ravivyas 10y agoOne can only assume that they want to dig their heels into entreprise. LinkedIn is massive when it comes to professional connections & Hiring, even company PR. LinkedIn has a bunch of products that can connect well into MS’s ecosystems and add value there.
- rbanffy 10y agoThey probably got Slideshare (meh) and Lynda (very good) in the package. Disclaimer: I work at one of Lynda's competitors.
- donkeyd 10y agoPrediction: LinkedIn will integrate with office 365, and you will be forced into a LinkedIn for Business account when you use Office 365. You can choose to make your information public, private or a combination of both (hopefully). This will be marketed as a single place to keep up-to-date resumes, towards both job seekers and corporate HR people who want better insight into their own workforce.
- quantumhobbit 10y agoThe only explanation I can come up with is an aquihire of dark ui-pattern experts from LinkdIn to better trick users into installing Windows 10.
- hammerbrostime 10y agoI'm surprised by the amount of negativity about the deal here on HN. It seems like an excellent match. I could see LinkedIn as an asset for Microsoft anywhere in the realms of work collaboration and HR. No other social network besides LinkedIn comes close to complimenting MicroSoft's wheelhouse of enterprise utility.
- ravivyas 10y agoI agree, plus Slideshare can be a massive boost to Powerpoint.
- threeseed 10y agoActually there hasn't been enough talk about the companies LinkedIn acquired. Connectifier - recruiting intelligence Lynda - online learning FlipTop - predictive marketing RunHop - personalised content Refresh.io - relationship content surfacing These could be huge additions to Azure, Office 365, Bing, Cortana etc.
- ravivyas 10y agoYup and Rapportive too.
- mistermann 10y agoDon't know if Lynda is a particularly great platform for training but imho MS would be well advised to spend the pittance it would cost to develop high quality free training for all of its applications. Productive users of your tools is important, or should be.
- redwards510 10y agoYou mean something like Microsoft Virtual Academy[1] or Channel9 [2]? Both are free, excellent learning resources on par with Lynda or Pluralsight. [1] http://microsoftvirtualacademy.com/ http://microsoftvirtualacademy.com/ [2] https://channel9.msdn.com/ https://channel9.msdn.com/
- gloves 10y agoNew headline... "Bloated, behind the times corporate buys bloated, barely functioning social network."
- simonswords82 10y agoMan, if you think Microsoft are behind the times then you've not been keeping up with them. In the software development world Microsoft are about as with the teams as a company of their size could reasonably be.
- bbcbasic 10y agoThey are ahead. Asynchronous first class language support is sooooo 2011!
- makecheck 10y agoIn addition to what others have said (what does it get Microsoft, etc.), how would this even be allowed? It would mean most recruiters going through Microsoft to get to candidates. I can just imagine how well that would go over at other tech companies: how can they be sure Microsoft isn’t getting “first crack” at people, etc. and does Microsoft then know which companies are about to lose employees?
- gtirloni 10y agoMost recruiters going through Linked Inc. is any different? What would qualify a company to run an job board?
- makecheck 10y agoFor one thing, the scale is very different: Microsoft is into almost everything, whereas LinkedIn as a company was relatively focused. The number of competing companies that cared about LinkedIn seeing information is far smaller than the number of companies that compete with Microsoft in some way. Never mind the fact that Microsoft owns a platform used by the vast majority of devices.
- pif 10y agoI had been thinking recently about deleting my LinkedIn account. The question has just been settled.
- swalsh 10y agoIt's a lot like dating. Today you can simply post a profile on a site/app, and algorithms can now match you. Your exposure is now hundreds or thousands of people (no matter your preferences). The happenstance of being in the right place at the right time is cut down so much, it's almost irrelevant. It's far more likely a great match will be on the 1 of 3 places single people go, within the last month. It makes better matches faster. It's a superior way to date. Without being on LinkedIn, you're now relying on only the network you've built to date. Unfortunately, LinkedIn is not as efficient as OkCupid, but it's where everyone is, and it's the best place to find a career match. Saying you're going to delete your LinkedIn account is a lot like saying "eh, I'm just going to grab drinks at the bar until I meet the right person"
- cinquemb 10y agoPersonally, I never had any decent job offers from linkedin. Everything has been lukewarm or spammy at best. Angel list on the other hand, works way better for me, so if a gun were put to my head to choose between either and drop the other, I'd drop linkedin. Linkedin seems kind of useful as far as signalling who/what types of people you are connected to if you don't add everyone at a whim when they request (like sub 250 connections), but I don't really know what that's worth to me or to others, and I don't think this a gun to the head moment.
- pif 10y agoSame for me. Linkedin was only useful as a sort of social network to keep contacts with former colleagues. For the Swiss job market, jobup.ch is the way to go.
- codeisawesome 10y agoExactly. LinkedIn is... IF that, only ONE of the 3 places the "Single People" of this context go. As a developer, people I want to work with are looking for me in many, many places. LinkedIn is definitely one of the "easy places" but that also means I get a lot of spam. I'm going to look a lot more closely at my own website now. People who want to work with us, "search" for us, not "LinkedIn" for us - thankfully. This means local IRL networks, communities, a certain Q&A site, events and blogs if you were wondering. This isn't my most coherent comment. I'm not happy with what has just happened at all.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- lenniez 10y agoIt seems like a good fit. I getting these .NET developer recruiters with their "perfect match messages" even though I don't have .NET in my skillset...
- scotu 10y agoAre the guys in the picture at the top photoshopped on another pic?
- appleflaxen 10y agoDoesn't it look like it? The light is really wonky; either photoshop or an HDR photo (which would be a really weird choice here). and the composition is just bizarre. so strange to see for a multibillion dollar company acquiring another one.
- r2dnb 10y agoRegarding the picture at the top of the article, it looks like it's been photoshopped. The lighting is inconsistent with the background. I think the tree on the left has been added with the same lighting to try make the lighting of Satya and the two others unnoticed. Without the tree, this picture would be blatantly laughable. At the same level as http://goo.gl/S6y3Qx http://goo.gl/S6y3Qx
- colaone 10y agoWhat does this mean for the startup/VC market in the shirt term? Confidence trending upwards again?
- Peroni 10y agoThe fact is, Microsoft needed a content ecosystem. Buying LinkedIn gives it a lot of content AND a huge stake in the recruitment game which is a huge and growing market. The deal makes sense.
- threeseed 10y agoBing/Cortana could benefit immensely having access to all of the LinkedIn content.
- jackweirdy 10y agoLinkedIn content is basically the same as Forwards from Grandma with the odd job announcement interspersed
- wangii 10y agoIs Jeff Weiner photoshopped onto the pic?
- oblio 10y agoThe comments here are hilarious, they really reveal the IT bubble. The only real complaint about this purchase would be that LinkedIn was overvalued. And I wouldn't bet on that since Microsoft surely sent a big team of their brightest cookies to make a valuation of the company. But other than that, LinkedIn fits: it is a corporate social network, if you will. I know that "corporate social network" is almost an oxymoron, but bear with me. It is social in the sense that users register and interact with each other just as on a regular social network, but ultimately the service is corporate focused. LinkedIn has created one of the biggest and best maintained databases of employment information (and of possible business contacts) in the world. As TheArcane said, LinkedIn is "Facebook + Monster on steroids". If you don't believe me, try to speak to people you know, active professionals outside of the IT sector and see how many of them have LinkedIn profiles. Better yet, talk to people who are not in employer-dominated sectors (i.e. not like IT, where the demand for qualified workers greatly exceeds the supply).
- argonaut 10y agoExactly. I had LinkedIn on my list of undervalued tech stocks, and I think this bears that out. LinkedIn has absolutely no competition. LinkedIn is the world's biggest, virtually-complete graph of most enterprise organizational charts / structures. That alone will be valuable for Microsoft's enterprise business.
- _yosefk 10y agoMS could, erm, look up those org charts on linkedin.com for $0 (indeed very useful at times.) What value is added by buying LinkedIn for $26G? How owning LinkedIn is going to add $1-1.5B/year (assuming eventually you want a P/E between, I dunno, 15 and 25), to MS's revenue? (I'm sure someone at MS has an answer to this, it's just that they haven't been tremendously successful in the past with their big acquisitions; I don't think Skype or Nokia paid off. And in general tech companies often buy other companies without much apparent success. Why is it so crazy to doubt their wisdom in any particular instance?)
- tajen 10y ago
- cbanek 10y agoIf Microsoft buys LinkedIn, I wonder if Facebook will now try to enter that territory.
- codingmyway 10y agoFacebook IS trying to enter that territory. Look up Facebook At Work. This should help to stifle that.
- sickbeard 10y agoContinuing my theory that Nadella doesn't know what he's doing. I don't think Microsoft learned anything from buying Yammer.
- id122015 10y agohow many of you use Microsoft OR Linkedin ? Upvote if result is: NO
- ifdefdebug 10y agoThere seems to be a rather common misconception surfacing on every single thread about Microsoft, which could be summarized like this: HN User => !MS user && MS user => !HN user
- Retr0spectrum 10y agoWould "Mutually Exclusive" be a better summary?
- bbcbasic 10y agoIf this hypothesis is correct there are no HN users.
- bbcbasic 10y agoC# developer here. I use skype too. Had to downvote you
- steve371 10y agovery interesting news to say at least.
- JumpCrisscross 10y agoNot that LinkedIn was stellar in any regard around user privacy, but is the situation expected to materially degrade under Microsoft?
- JumpCrisscross 10y agoNot that LinkedIn was stellar in any regard around user privacy, but is the situation expected to materially degrade under Microsoft?
- diakritikal 10y agoMySpace 2.0
- cm2187 10y agoDoes anyone know why they are paying a 50% premium to closing price? That seems massive.
- elcct 10y agoI have a friend request hanging there for the last couple of years and I can't accept it or reject it :) Maybe Microsoft will fix it...
- max_ 10y agoA leas they will fix the LinkedIN UI, that thing was psiing me off!!
- deskamess 10y agoThis kinda makes sense from an enterprise social network perspective. This could tie really well and augment their messaging products (Skype for Business (was Lync)). Most professionals may not have Skype or may not wish to expose their Skype ids but maybe ok with LinkedIn as that has always been their professional front. So basically every LinkedIn account has Skype integration. I can see the marketing angle from a group meeting, and eventually collaboration perspective.
- rloc 10y agoThis is huge. As an ex-Microsoft, I really don't understand that move. It doesn't make any sense. If the goal is to compete with the like of Facebook, I don't think it'll work as Linkedin is a business network. It makes me want to sell my stocks (-3.63% pre-market). If I were MS I would have bought slack to replace both Sharepoint and Yammer.
- ocdtrekkie 10y agoWhy is having a social network always just about competing with Facebook? Microsoft is very much in the business space, this is a business focused social network. Not a bad place to work on your business brand. The word is they almost bought Slack, but decided to heavily invest into Lync instead, turning it into Skype for Business and such.
- dorianm 10y agoLinkedIn is becoming this internet monster. Where is the ethic alternative that is for everybody? (e.g.: AngelList is only for tech startups stuff and not for waiter kind of stuff).
- techaddict009 10y agoCurrent market share price is of 132$ then why did Microsoft pay 90$ high? Any reason?
- selmat 10y agoprobably there are some information hidden behind scene.
- davidiach 10y agoNoob question: how can Microsoft buy LinkedIn given that large parts of it are owned buy random investors who might not want to sell? What happens to someone who, lets say, bought $10k worth of LinkedIn stock two years ago and has no intention to sell. Will that person be forced to sell his stock?
- dragonwriter 10y agoGenerally, the corporation's internal governing documents will specify the rules for sale, but the norm is a majority vote of the shareholders. Those who voted against may have some remedies if the firm was undervalued, but, yes, they can be forced to sell stock.
- shawn-butler 10y agoThe remedies vary but in Delaware these disputes are heard in Delaware's Court of Chancery. You can google for recent judgement in the (re?)purchase of Dell by Michael Dell. Chancellor ruled the stock was underpriced by the terms of the sale but the remedy is available only to those shareholders who sued not all. Appraisal is a bizarre bit of corporate law to say the least.
- rileymat2 10y agoYes, if a majority of the votes from shareholders approve of a sale others will be forced to sell.
- huherto 10y agoFollow up noob question: Do they buy all stock in public hands or just a part? How do they decide he is obligated to sell ?
- ElijahLynn 10y agoI feel like I should cancel my LinkedIn account now. Hrm..
- mykhal 10y ago/me done. finally.
- JumpCrisscross 10y agoPer LinkedIn's Form 8-K [1], LinkedIn has agreed to pay Microsoft a $725 million break-up fee if (a) LinkedIn's Board of Directors withdraws its recommendation of the merger, (b) LinkedIn accepts a superior offer, or (c) LinkedIn's stockholders turn the merger down. Note that LinkedIn may terminate the merger without paying the break-up fee if it avoids announcing an acquisition within one year of so terminating [2]. [1] https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1271024/000110465916126712/a16-13234_18k.htm https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1271024/000110465916... [2] https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1271024/000110465916126713/a16-13234_1ex2d1.htm https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1271024/000110465916...
- CamperBob2 10y agoI'm gonna take a wild guess here and say that LinkedIn isn't likely to torpedo the merger.
- shostack 10y agoIs it normal to have the clause about the shareholders turning the merger down? Seems like one helluva way to ram it down shareholders throats without much option to say no.
- pbarnes_1 10y agoThat's why it's done.
- wtbob 10y agoAs a shareholder I would find that kind of behaviour to have been the exact opposite of the kind of duty my mangers owe me. I'm surprised it's legal.
- JauntTrooper 10y agoUnfortunately yes, it's pretty common. It's less than 3% of deal value though, so they don't lose the option to say no.
- ravivyas 10y agoI think the important question is why did linkedIn want to sell itself .. they were not in as much trouble as Twitter.
- mvip 10y agoWas this Microsoft's elaborate $26bn marketing plan to get the media to look away from Apple's WWDC announcements?
- CephalopodMD 10y agoMy thoughts exactly! Not that that's the main idea, but it is an odd coincidence that the announcement was today.
- kabdib 10y agoToo much money. Wayyyy too much. And if this goes the way of most other very large MS acquisitions, it'll be utterly wasted.
- swalsh 10y agoHow does it work when a public company acquires another public company? If you have existing LinkedIn shares, do they get converted to Microsoft shares?... or do they just disappear one day, and a pile of cash takes its place?
- dragonwriter 10y agoThat depends if the sale is for cash, stock, or a mix. Could be either or both of the alternatives you lay out.
- gizmodo59 10y agoThis is an all cash acquisition.
- colinbartlett 10y agoIn this case, the deal was structured as all cash. So the latter is exactly what happens. One day in your brokerage account you will see $X for every Y shares you had.
- greg7gkb 10y agoWhat about employee equity? Especially unvested options or stock units?
- neovive 10y agoI wonder what the future holds for Lynda.com which was just recently purchased by LinkedIn. I've been a member for years and was already concerned over the LI acquisition. Hopefully, they are not lost in the shuffle.
- gz5 10y agoLinkedIn + Skype + Yammer gives MS the best inter-business or B2B directory/identity/contact-ibility. Extremely valuable for a company competing for inter-business collaboration. Depending how used, of course.
- koolba 10y agoI predict the next version of AD/Outlook will allow for direct integration between a company's workforce information and said workforce's public profile. Why bother with scraping your user's contact list when you can feed directly from the source system that already includes their name, email address, and job title.
- cdnsteve 10y agoWhat a terrible time to be burning that much cash, just before the next recession, and on a resume site. I was starting to see some good things coming from Microsoft but this makes me shake my head and question leadership big time.
- theseatoms 10y ago> just before the next recession Citation needed.
- metalliqaz 10y agoTrump is going to win. Recession unavoidable.
- applecore 10y agoOuch. Reid Hoffman's 11 percent stake in LinkedIn is going to result in a $1 billion tax bill.
- chdir 10y agoMS : "If you don't upgrade to Windows 10, we'll create a linkedin profile for you."
- cs2818 10y agoI mostly avoid LinkedIn, then they acquired Lynda.com and began integrating into (and basically degrading the experience of) a platform I had enjoyed for many years. My only concern is what this means for Lynda.com, it would be great if it could return to its pre-LinkedIn state, but I have a feeling it will somehow only get worse.
- moon_of_moon 10y ago$26 Billion is actually fair : The question is, would it provide earnings of $2.6 Billion per year discounted over the next ten years? I think so. Keep in mind, MS sells $90 billion of product and services a year, so we're talking less than 3% of that. (MS cost of revenue is about a third of revenues!) 1] First imagine LinkedIn used as the primary sales channel for MS products. Head of sales is probably salivating. 2] And then there is advertising. I think part of the reason LinkedIn is valuable is this: apart from LinkedIn there is no simple way (barring credit cards or other documents) to verify if an account who signs up to an online service is a real person, or who they claim to be. For an advertising business, this is gold: Expect the LinkedIn federated sign on to be integrated into many microsoft services (and by more third party services.) Strategically if you are selling software/anything, you have are better off targeting the top 10% of earners rather than a gazillion broke teenagers. Of course there are fake profiles on LinkedIn, but they are minor, and weeding them out is probably easier than on other platforms.
- therein 10y ago> $26 Billion is actually fair : The question is, would it provide earnings of $2.6 Billion per year discounted over the next ten years? > Keep in mind, MS sells $90 billion of product and services a year, so we're talking less than 3% of that. (MS cost of revenue is about a third of revenues!) 30%
- moon_of_moon 10y agoAnnualized over 10 years. One of the ways you value a company is by discounting the future cashflows.
- perseusprime11 10y agoTwo turkeys don't make an eagle
- tacos 10y agoSomeone else must've been interested. Salesforce, maybe?
- tacos 10y agoThanks for the downvotes! Theory confirmed two days after I posted this: http://www.recode.net/2016/6/16/11958588/salesforce-also-made-a-bid-for-linkedin-confirms-ceo-benioff-untitled http://www.recode.net/2016/6/16/11958588/salesforce-also-mad...
- bgribble 10y agoMicrosoft exec #1: "It seems that people are hating us less and less these days. Somehow, the quality of our products and services is perceived as higher and less hostile to users. That's a problem!" Microsoft exec #2: "How about we acquire one of the most hated brands out there? One that makes tech people grind their teeth when it's even mentioned. How about LinkedIn? That should tarnish our image up till it's right back where it used to be." Microsoft exec #1: "There could be a vice-presidency in it for me if I can make that work! Great idea!"
- codeisawesome 10y agoDilbert material.
- SeaDude 10y agoMark my words... Microsoft should have bought Wordpress. Much cheaper and could replace Sharepoint which is the most terrible invention on earth. Why diversify your confusing offerings even further from relevance? LinkedIN? Come on.
- miguelrochefort 10y ago"Think: everyone who graduates from college and looks for a job will now have a Microsoft account." https://twitter.com/saschasegan/status/742342770891862016 https://twitter.com/saschasegan/status/742342770891862016
- nacs 10y agoAm I the only one who has applied and gotten jobs without ever creating a LinkedIn account? After hearing all the horror stories about their email spam (and how they spam all your contacts) and how random recruiters contact you with irrelevant offers, I have (so far) managed to stay completely off LinkedIn and hope to never have to sign up.
- Geekette 10y agoYou probably have an account: LinkedIn has many ghost accounts auto-generated based on findings from trawling users' address books/contact lists.
- dzink 10y agoA social network is only as good as the recency of its data. They could integrate with Bing to show "people you know", and with other tools, it if people stop updating their profiles, it would be an expensive building acquisition. Congratulations to AngelList!
- nxzero 10y agoSeems grossly over priced on a per active user basis: ________ 26.2 billion / (425 million*25% active) = $247 per active user
- phamilton 10y agoIs that 25% active an estimate or a reported number?
- nxzero 10y agoThe source for the 25% of users being active in a month was from the 3rd quarter earnings report for 2015. http://venturebeat.com/2015/10/29/linkedin-now-has-400m-users-but-only-25-of-them-use-it-monthly/ http://venturebeat.com/2015/10/29/linkedin-now-has-400m-user...
- kartD 10y agoShoot! I was planning to buy the stock soon. Say what you will about the crappiness of the product and the dark patterns, but it was a great stock to buy and probably the only social network with a diverse split in revenues (excluding Facebook - they use acquisitions to diversify revenue but nothing has been monitized yet)
- harianus 10y agoLink to the press release: http://news.microsoft.com/2016/06/13/microsoft-to-acquire-linkedin/ http://news.microsoft.com/2016/06/13/microsoft-to-acquire-li...
- exelius 10y agoGreat move. IMO this is Microsoft making a play for HR managed services -- look for them to sign a big deal with ADP / BenefitsExpress / buy someone like Zenefits to complement this purchase. The power and value of LinkedIn is as a recruiting platform; and recruiting is a big-money problem that's only getting worse. If they can turn LinkedIn into a benefits management platform, that would be a huge win for Microsoft and likely resonate with employees as well -- while giving Microsoft de-facto ownership of the supply chain for knowledge workers. Microsoft is a traditional B2B company; they make boring enterprise software and sell it through traditional resellers. As more and more core business functions (like HR managed services) start being sold through these channels, it makes more and more sense for Microsoft to get into it. More importantly, Microsoft already has a sales relationship with nearly every company in the world -- and they can now cram a high-margin talent acquisition / management product down that sales pipe as well. IMO this is one of those acquisitions that wouldn't have made sense for Apple, Google or Facebook -- their customer base is too consumer-centric. But given Microsoft's heavy enterprise sales base, it absolutely makes sense for them. Nadella has finally gotten Microsoft to realize it's not really competing with Apple, Amazon, Google and Facebook -- its real competition is Oracle, Salesforce and IBM. Viewed through that lens, this is a great purchase.
- dimino 10y agoThis would be great, if you're right, because this is how we get to a place where we maintain our resumé in one place (LinkedIn) and don't have to play the whole "Please upload your resumé. Now please enter in all the details of your resumé." hellhole.
- jsprogrammer 10y agoI get messages through LinkedIn asking for my resume. Also, why would it be great for a company to exclusively maintain your resume?
- shimon 10y agoA few reasons: - There's one widely accessible database where resumes can be found. Since many people want to be found by prospective employers, this gives them an obvious place to put it. - The resume format can be standardized, so you can focus on meaningful differences instead of the cognitive challenges of extracting meaning from a heavily stylized document. - There can be a commonly available API for exposing this information e.g. in job applications (see "Apply with LinkedIn", which does exist). - Because it's a centralized database, it's more up-to-date with professional developments and changes of contact information. Not to say that it has to be a single company, let alone a linkedin-style company, maintaining all that infrastructure. But there is definitely value to a standardized infrastructure, and a company like LinkedIn seems to be a pretty successful way to build that.
- Kiro 10y agoOf course HN is mocking the deal like we know better without any form of analysis of the situation.
- skoocda 10y agoIsn't that a rather narrow minded reaction?
- travis_bickle 10y agoOn their press release[1] presentation[2] they have shown this as Microsoft's Graph - http://imgur.com/elacuzH http://imgur.com/elacuzH. How and Why is the question. [1]-https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/Investor https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/Investor [2]-https://c.s-microsoft.com/en-us/CMSFiles/InvestorPresentation.pptx?version=a19a08fd-6017-7f22-64c3-2f9aec438edf https://c.s-microsoft.com/en-us/CMSFiles/InvestorPresentatio...
- smaili 10y agoTo put things in perspective, WhatsApp was bought in October, 2014 for $22 billion.
- daveheq 10y agoI don't think anybody's going to like this but Microsoft.
- retube 10y agoThat's quite the pay day for Reid Hoffman. 14.5m shares at $196 = $2.8bn. All cash deal. Ching ching!!
- galfarragem 10y agoI personally don't like LinkedIn itself but I recognise that it fills an huge market need. Probably that's why LinkedIn survived to so many bad decisions and was able to retain users. Once Microsoft is walking the enterprise path, the acquisition looks like a logical investment. (logical != profitable)
- ProfChronos 10y agoOk, Linkedin is definitely dead :p
- bogomipz 10y agoCan someone explain how Microsoft bought a publicly traded company? Shareholders own Linked in, so did they buy a controlling interest and or is there currently a tender offer circulating for all holders of the common stock? Also curious that MS is valuing it Linked stock at $196 dollars a share when before the weekend it was trading at $133. Did they believe it was undervalued by almost 50% then? That seems dubious.
- andyjohnson0 10y agoIn the announcement Hoffman is described as the "controlling shareholder". Presumably this controlling interest [1] gives him the ability to agree to the sale without necessarily having the agreement of the other shareholders. [1] http://www.investopedia.com/terms/c/controllinginterest.asp http://www.investopedia.com/terms/c/controllinginterest.asp
- bogomipz 10y agoAh, I missed that pertinent detail in the announcement, makes sense. Thanks. Facebook is similar in this respect - a controlling person and publicly traded entity.
- Lapsa 10y agogood. disliked LinkedIn anyway
- astannard 10y agoI wonder what they do with the online training provider lynda which is owned by linkedin? They could use that to push free training for Azure to increase the reach of its services??
- ryanlm 10y agoWhat a surprise this is to hear! I didn't know LinkedIn was in the market to be acquired.
- doctorpangloss 10y ago> To be honest, they're probably buying the users, not the product. What is the value of those users? I'd argue they're basically worthless, and that this is a disastrously bad acquisition. Let me propose some concrete measures: How often is the service's single sign-on login button used in your app? What is the value of the users in your app sourced from this service? I'd argue this is a great comparison, because if you can't monetize LinkedIn's users by sourcing them from LinkedIn traditionally (via ads, clever sourcing hacks, sign in buttons, etc.), you're certainly not going to monetize them effectively by owning the whole platform. Where it is available, Facebook can be something like 10% of a free-to-play mobile game's logins. Facebook ads may be the source for as many as 20% of your users. Facebook login and Facebook sourced users often have long term value twice as high as everyone else. Facebook is very valuable, and it's what made Zynga, Supercell, IAC (Tinder, Match.com) rich. Spotify might see something as high as 20% logins, and the diminished amount of account sharing alone must make them a few million dollars extra. Theoretically, if Facebook had not censored game post spam on its network, Zynga would still be a huge, rich company. If only Zynga could have bought Facebook instead of all those little gaming companies... By comparison, LinkedIn retired their single sign in button. When it was available, it may have represented less than 1% of logins on a business service website and app. LinkedIn-sourced users had no different LTV, and represented less than 2% of all users. LinkedIn was probably overvalued before Microsoft bought it, radically so. LinkedIn had no way of legitimately realizing the 20% fees recruiters enjoy—and even if they did, those fees exist exclusively in the tech world, exclusively for a narrow part of the workforce, with no credible path to introducing those fees to the rest of employment recruiting. Considering LinkedIn's poor track record overall of the value of those users, what is Microsoft going to do with them instead? A bunch of companies try this path and fail. For example, GoDaddy is trying the same thing: Buy companies (you've never heard of) to try to cross-sell between GoDaddy users and company users. They make acquisitions based on incorrectly extrapolated LTVs for like 100 accounts they intensively hand cross-sold pre-acquisition. Then GoDaddy discovers two things a year later: the actual LTV of their test cohort, which is wildly below their estimate, and the actual value of the remaining 99,900 of their acquired users, which is nothing. Even if you bought a zero-revenue startup for $100,000 and your cost per acquired user (CPA) is $1.00, your LTV is still near $0, so what did you earn? I suspect this purchase isn't about users. I suspect major LinkedIn investors shopped around the company and financial-engineered a sophisticated kickback for the decision makers on the acquirer's end. Much like when Google purchased the Google Ventures-backed Nest and enriched a huge number of insiders at great shareholder expense, the acquisition team at Microsoft was probably duped into enriching a great deal of insiders too.
- Omnipresent 10y agoEvery user gets .net endorsements
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- unfunco 10y ago$26.2bn for a list of recruitment agencies. They could have bought the same data on the dark web for much cheaper...
- justinzollars 10y agoLinkedin is a great buy for Microsoft! Congratulations to my Linkedin friends. :)
- eddd 10y agoI'd like to see this valuation - this transaction looks shaky at best.
- jernfrost 10y agoSounds like an awful lot of money. Must be cheaper ways to make the money LinkedIn is supposed to make them. And MS has a pretty bad history with these big acquisitions. MS Kin failed. Skype is not what it used to be. People seemed to start leaving it after MS bought it and made it worse. Nokia was a big disaster. Shouldn't they have learned by now? I pretty sure MS is not going to make back the money spent on LinkedIn.
- chadwilken 10y agoTwo shitty companies merge. I can only imagine what Microsoft has planned for LinkedIn. Hopefully this is one of those acquisitions where they purchase it and shut it down months later.
- spriggan3 10y agowow, nice exit for LinkedIn. Microsoft now also owns Lynda.com .
- korginator 10y agoInteresting to see the obvious pro-microsoft bias in comments here. I can only imagine the worst from microsoft and their user-hostile behaviour. * trojan-like telemetry impossible to control or block * malware-like behaviour through "legitimate" software update channels, force-feeding windows 10 on unwilling customers * embrace-extend-extinguish, mission accomplished by destroying Nokia's smart phone business * their recent shenanigans with skype, and how they killed Linux support * their abysmal, hard-to-use new directions in UI design (flat, 2D, no contrast, paper-like, or even metro for that matter) I can already think of three to four nasty ways they can leverage (abuse) all the LinkedIn user information, work history, contacts, and networks, and I'm sure they will do it based on their recent user-antagonistic behaviour. Oh, but they've nicely polished up their PR machinery so everything's cool now.
- lanevorockz 10y agoI totally agree that Hacker News is becoming quite bias ... This in itself should be raise with the ycombinator itself, the bias is what pushed Slashdot down
- teh_klev 10y agodang (mod) addressed this misplaced belief that there's MS bias a few days ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11844253 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11844253
- steveoc64 10y agoAt least in the discussions area, there is a distinct lack of "hacker culture" opinion expressed on any topic, given the name of the forum. At least from where I am standing, this reflects very poorly on ycombinator, and the "Tech Culture" that they are putting investors in touch with. Trigger Warning - Doubleplus Ungood Thoughtcrime ahead For a certain portion of the readership, Microsoft can do no wrong ... and when they do wrong, it's never their fault. Perhaps the site should be renamed to "Young Upwardly Mobile Professionals with Rose Coloured Glasses and No Clue, Living in an Artificially Inflated 1st World Bubble News" would be a more accurate title. This acquisition makes perfect sense for anyone who thinks that "the real economy" is in great shape, and middle management jobs are likely to experience unheard of growth over the next few years. Layoff numbers are just made up propaganda, and everyone around the world loves the US Dollar. When this level of backslapping groupthink starts to predominate, its a pretty sure sign that things are rotten in Denmark, and should be a clear warning sign for smart investors in this market. But .... each to their own, its their money they are gambling with I suppose. (or conversely, other people's retirement hopes that they are gambling with) * Anyway, I find it interesting that Linkedin's infrastructure is written in a mashup of Java, Scala, Ruby, and God knows what else. You can almost guarantee that somewhere in the corridors of power, some pointy haired boss types are putting together a PowerPoint® presentation on how they are going to port all of Linkedin's codebase to .NET in 3 easy steps, for great profit. What could possibly go wrong ? Big congrats to anyone that manages to cash in their Linkedin stock in the near future. If so, you have just managed to sell premium seats on the deck of the Titanic for top dollar !!
- agentgt 10y agoI bought linkedin a couple of months ago at like 108 or so... I'm debating whether or not to sell half or all my stock... needless to say the wife is thrilled that I finally did some investing right :)
- mhudson125 10y agoI was wondering this too, but I think half the reason the stock jumped up to ~192 is due to the sentiment of this acquisition being approved by the FTC. Since it's a cash deal, you'll miss out on ~$4 share, and since you bought in Feb/March, you'll end up paying your normal tax rate in capital gains. My guess is they approve this deal before Feb/March so no clear advantage holding for that reason. Perhaps someone else could chime in as well?
- wnevets 10y agoWhy? Linkedin is kinda awful.
- sctb 10y agoWe updated the link from http://blogs.microsoft.com/firehose/2016/06/13/microsoft-to-acquire-linkedin/#sm.001trr8qq17rjdt2xt1122l06mc16 http://blogs.microsoft.com/firehose/2016/06/13/microsoft-to-..., which points to this.
- bitL 10y agoBye bye LinkedIn!
- Twisell 10y agoThis could be totally unrelated, but damn this is a pretty stupid bad signal. LinkedIn's iOS Developer Community cancels WWDC watch party after Microsoft purchase: http://appleinsider.com/articles/16/06/13/linkedins-ios-developer-community-cancels-wwdc-watch-party-after-microsoft-purchase http://appleinsider.com/articles/16/06/13/linkedins-ios-deve...
- Velox 10y agoI imagine it's to stop hoards of reporters from coming in and bugging them for as many details as possible.
- scvalencia 10y agoWhat does that mean to Scala?
- lmm 10y agoI'm not aware of Linkedin maintaining any widely-used libraries or anything like that, so probably very little. (Hadn't they already vocally moved away from Scala and onto something newer and trendier?)
- anilshanbhag 10y agoI am currently a grad student at a top5 university in US and been at a top5 in India. I can say from experience that LinkedIn is dying and no longer valued as professional profile. LinkedIn had a nice concept of connection, however after a few accept alls I have 500+ connections with a similar amount pending. The messages I receive are garbage, the feed is stale. There is no incentive to open the website and I have unsubscribed from all their marketing email as they are ~ spam. Maybe this is just me but I feel WhatsApp is way more popular /useful/growing and Microsoft paid more than that for a dying network.
- vthallam 10y agoTrue, Linkedin is spam and their apps/feed are copycats of FB. But, they have a monopoly over professional networking and so recruiting. The data is the gold mine, there's no way any new company would be able to convince 440 million people to create profile with all the information. So all MSFT wants to is to probably improve their product line, cross sell Office/Dynamics to Linkedin's customers and may be buy some HR/payroll to create a complete suite(Recruting+ HR + Communication + Enterprise tools).
- Zigurd 10y agoPlusses: LinkedIn is distinctive among social networks. That's one reason Facebook hasn't killed LinkedIn, yet. Though I increasingly find my business contacts interact with me on Facebook rather than LinkedIn. A bigger plus may be that a business-oriented social network is strategically coherent for Microsoft. Minuses: LinkedIn is relatively small. It's not that well-implemented. It has an oddball business model. It has no messaging component, and that's where social networking is going.
- njade 10y agoFrom now, when you logout of LinkedIn, you will be redirected to msn.com :P
- denzell 10y agoMicrosoft just spent 5% of their market cap buying Linkedin. Does anybody think linkedin is worth one twentieth of Microsoft? I don't.
- swalsh 10y agoI do, it's literally the most valuable network in the world. Facebook is a friends connection, but LinkedIn is a professional network. Add to that it also has some amazing insight into the macroeconomy, it's also a great tool for prediction. LinkedIn knows the job report before the jobs report is released. Do you know how much money changes hands after that report is released?
- mdev 10y agoI hope this does not end up being a Yammer 2.0. I also don't see other companies advertising jobs on the platform owned my a big tech giant whose sole purpose isn't that. I don't think they will make more money in the "recruiting" side. This deal sounds like a 50% premium but that just brings it back to what it was 6 months ago, lesser than the peak price. Sounds more like LinkedIn just gave up. Only positive thing I see is, that MS can bundle HR software with Office 365.
- vadym909 10y agoWhat's interesting about this deal is what didn't happen 1. Google who is right next door and wants to make a dent in Cloud didn't go after them 2. LinkedIn who is a monopoly in this category- decided to give up trying to go its own- seems like they knew they topped out
- rmykhajliw 10y agoI believe it will be great for whole industry, because microsoft money pushed Likedin to more user and developer friendly environment (Yes, I suppose they will open API again aka twitter). Better API will bring more business tools integration, so it increases role of Linkedin, as result it will push the whole social media market to a new level, instead current stagnation.
- jijji 10y agoits not worth 26 million lol
- doingmyting 10y agoIt apparently is worth more, $26 Billion to be exact
- iplaw 10y agoI foresee a synergistic relationship between the companies. Microsoft is reorganizing to focus on business cloud solutions, built upon a subscription-based model. The online Office365 suite is the future. Acquiring LinkedIn will allow for targeting IT professionals. That said, I hate LinkedIn.
- whack 10y agoThis is a fantastic move for Microsoft, and IMO, a premature throwing-in-the-towel moment for LinkedIn. At $26B, that's less than 10% of Facebook's market-cap. That's a steal for the world's biggest Social-Professional Network, and the medium through which most recruiting could conceivably happen in the future. Given that MS currently has no social presence at all, but has a fantastic enterprise sales channel, LinkedIn is a great asset for them. The idea of going to physical career fairs in thousands of colleges around the country, and collecting/handing out paper resumes just to make the connections happen, always seemed like a woefully inefficient way of connecting job seekers with employers. In the future, this process is going to become more and more digital, and networks like LinkedIn are going to become vital hubs in this new wave. If Microsoft can find a way to accelerate and monetize this trend, this acquisition could well be one of the best deals of the decade.
- Theo59 10y agoMS does have a 1-2% stake in Facebook lest we forget
- whack 10y agoMS having a 2% stake in FB is like Yahoo buyings its stake in AliBaba. Yes, it's a great financial investment for MS and they are going to make a lot of money from it. But there's no way FB is going to allow itself to get integrated into MS core services, just because of a 2% stake.
- c_c_c 10y agoLinkedIn at 10% of Facebook's cap is super over valued. It's pure spam. Everyone is suggesting Microsoft will improve, add features! It would have been better and cheaper to create from scratch. LinkedIn exists in a space that none of the big player care to enter seriously.
- askafriend 10y agoIt would not have been cheaper to create from scratch, certainly not in a reasonable amount of time. You're truly underestimating just how sticky a product like LinkedIn really is.
- 0xmohit 10y agoI'd like to add you to my professional network on LinkedIn https://twitter.com/iamdevloper/status/714390085647511552 https://twitter.com/iamdevloper/status/714390085647511552
- statictype 10y agoHeadline should have been "Microsoft adds LinkedIn to their professional network"
- ajharrison 10y agoUnderrated post.
- msie 10y agoI just can't imagine 26 billion dollars. That's beyond any human's comprehension.
- dredmorbius 10y agoYou do it through comparisons. A typical SF Bay Area core house is running close to $1 million these days. A thousand such homes would be a billion. That's a small town, or a particular (upscale) San Francisco neighborhood, say, PacHeights or Cole Valley. Home to about 3,000 - 4,000 people. Twenty six neighborhoods would be the full LinkedIn value. Call it 26,000 homes in the San Francisco or Peninsula area. Most of Palo Alto, and a neighboring town, say, Menlo Park, or Redwood City. About 75,000 - 100,000 people. One eighth of San Francisco. The typical new car is, roughly, $26,000. A thousand of them them is $26 million. A typical freeway lane can see 2,000 cars an hour per lane, or, say for a large 10-lane freeway, 20,000 cars per hour. If you filled that highway to capacity for just over 2 days, you'd see $26 billion worth of (new) cars flowing past. A 150,000 square foot school at $300/sqft construction costs (via random DDGing) runs about $45 million. You could build about 570 such schools. Annual operating expenses of a large high school might run about $30 million. You could fund ~870 such schools for a year (or one school for 870 years). Annual petroleum consumption in the US is about 19.6 million barrels per day. The LinkedIn purchase prices would cover 26 days of $50/bbl oil for the US.
- tinhangliu 10y agoimpressive
- 0xmohit 10y agoComing to an inbox near you: “I'd like to add you to my professional network on Bing+” https://twitter.com/iamdevloper/status/742391687801147394 https://twitter.com/iamdevloper/status/742391687801147394
- wwweston 10y agoAn angle I haven't seen anyone mention: They now own Lynda.com, one of the strongest software and general education entities out there. This gives them not only a channel for promoting their own software (or providing some really comprehensive integrated help/training), but an insight into what kinds of software and other training people are putting time into.
- hitlin37 10y agoso in the end, a recruiting problem is solved bya software company, now could be named as the big L. wondering what happened to all those people who studied Human Resource as a management branch and what are they doing now when whole recruiting thing is being run by bunch of sw engineers sitting in silicon valley and crunching big data.
- duderific 10y agoYou still need human beings at companies who do HR, at least at decent sized companies. Someone needs to set up the interviews, walk people around, be the recipient of questions about payroll, PTO etc., and that is work nobody else wants to do.
- sbardle 10y agoLinkedIn is a static and largely useless platform. I have been on it for many years, there has been no innovation, and I can fully understand why its share price has taken a beating. Microsoft are desperate and deluded. Who would want to own Microsoft shares - this company is finished, surely. If this doesn't indicate a bubble in tech, I don't know what does.
- habitue 10y agoAssuming your premises are true (Microsoft is done, LinkedIn is done), this isn't evidence for a bubble. The stock of these two companies could be priced perfectly right for their current and potential profits, and yet they might also be doomed. This might indicate (again, given your premises) that Microsoft is looking to find new sources of revenue, which would result in raising their stock price. By saying this indicates a bubble means you think LinkedIn and Microsoft are overvalued in some way. Whether or not that's true, this particular move isn't evidence of being overvalued.
- sbardle 10y agoThanks for your considered response. You could well be right, but for the moment, I'd put a red-hot poker in my eye if LinkedIn is worth 26 big ones. Long term, tech is a great place to be, but this is getting silly, surely.
- gabrielc 10y agoI think this will be a new source of memes.
- btbuildem 10y ago"LinkedIn will retain its distinct brand, culture and independence" -- well that's a shame..
- jrochkind1 10y ago> LinkedIn will retain its distinct brand, culture and independence. Darnit, I thought there was hope for a second.
- Artful_Dodger 10y agoI'm reading many disparaging comments about this, but I bet if it were facebook or some other popular company favored by this group that made this purchase the comments would have a different tone.
- djrjfhrdjcjf 10y agoNot really. Both are cancerous blights on the internet.
- anguswithgusto 10y agoFound the best summary of today's events so far... [0] "SEATTLE — In a last-ditch attempt to connect with consumers, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella announced on Monday that he had purchased LinkedIn for $26.2 billion in an all-cash deal. Founded in 2003, the social networking giant — which boasts more than 443 million professionals — makes it possible for users to “connect” with people they don’t like enough to add on Facebook. 443 million of those “connections” were made early Monday morning, as Microsoft’s Nadella attempted to fulfill a lifelong dream of having more internet friends than MySpace Tom. The deal, which had been in the works for months, came together only days after Microsoft placed a set of similar bids for Yahoo, Neopets, and Geocities in an effort to buy up the rest of 2005’s hottest web properties. At $26.2B for 443M friends, Microsoft has answered a long-held question about the true cost of friendship: the answer? $59.14 USD." [0] https://medium.com/@draftedapp/microsoft-ceo-finds-26-2b-under-mattress-buys-website-779bf3bb3e3f https://medium.com/@draftedapp/microsoft-ceo-finds-26-2b-und...
- natmaster 10y agoGeocities is 1998. If you want 2005 try digg.com
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- downtide 10y agoWhat a waste. What a waste. What a waste.
- exclusiv 10y agoRegardless of how you feel, I think it's pretty amazing that even Microsoft with its vast resources doesn't feel they could compete with LinkedIn if they invested that same 26B in themselves.
- erikpukinskis 10y agoMoney is only one of the many resources you need to compete effectively. Another one is culture-integrated staff.
- eva1984 10y agoUsers, how are u going to gain those many users.
- exclusiv 10y agoYou could spend 1B on the product and still have 25B for user acquisition. Microsoft already has an email list larger than LinkedIn.
- mynameislegion 10y agoWow, tons of armchair CEOs and VCs chiming in on this lol :rolleyes:
- dang 10y agoPlease don't respond to unsubstantive comments with an even more unsubstantive comment. That just makes the thread worse.
- mynameislegion 10y agook, whatever you say boss hog
- fiatjaf 10y agoI hope LinkedIn is shut now forever now, with all the spam.
- 0xmohit 10y agohttps://twitter.com/ThePracticalDev/status/742343361483448320 https://twitter.com/ThePracticalDev/status/74234336148344832...
- kbenson 10y agoI think it's telling of the times, my increased opinion of Microsoft, and my horrible impression of LinkedIn, that I expect this to result in better LinkedIn behavior than previously. Microsoft still has its own problems, but in my opinion they are far better than the skeezy feeling I get from LinkedIn's marketing and promotion to "linked" email accounts (that is, addresses they've associated to you and send notices that people are trying to contact you on).
- hackaflocka 10y agoFacebook does something similarly sleazy. I have multiple email accounts. Facebook hasn't made the connection that I'm the same person. On each email account I regularly get emails saying that my profile has already been set-up and all I have to do is log-in for the first time by clicking on this link (and yes, I have a Facebook account linked to a different email address).
- kbenson 10y agoI'm not sure how this isn't considered spam. Unless you've expressly told them that the other account is yours, there's no way to ensure they aren't sending unsolicited email,as "we thought they would want to know" is not a valid defense against the laws that exist.
- samfisher83 10y agoWhen they write off the 26 billion in a few years the tax payer will be paying 40% of the purchase price.
- jpadkins 10y agotop bracket of corp tax rate is 35%. And taking less money from a corp one year is not 'tay payer paying for it'. The federal government will take less money from msft, that is not the tax payer paying for 35% of the purchase price.
- preetish 10y agoMy take on this: - Better integration of Dynamics CRM with LinkedIn - A move towards social selling with LinkedIn Sales Navigator - Enriched LinkedIn news-feed with updates from work life (example: meetings, projects) - Better Cortana (personal assistant) that can help you professionally - Integration of Office suite with LinkedIn learning - Usage of Bing for professional search
- elsewhen 10y agothis pcworld article claims that better cortana is the key driver: http://www.pcworld.com/article/3083016/software-productivity/why-microsoft-bought-linkedin-for-26-billion-in-one-word-cortana.html http://www.pcworld.com/article/3083016/software-productivity...
- Swannie 10y agoYes, me too. The ability to automatically import contact's data into Dynamics, with integration directly into Skype for Business. One click call integration for all your customers! Staff directory as a service? Maybe. Merged with Office 365 that might make sense.
- Xyik 10y agoI wish people would read company's quarterly performance reports before making claims about whether we're in a bubble and whether company x is worth y. LinkedIn generates a ton of revenue and is very arguably worth its valuation. Just because you don't use LinkedIn or SnapChat or whatever else has a ridiculous valuation these days doesn't mean its valuation is not justified in some way.
- pilom 10y agoThe problem is that revenue is not profit. If expenses are greater than revenue and the trends don't show that changing soon (i.e. "default dead") then it is extremely hard to justify such a high valuation. There are the employees, the physical infrastructure, the code they've written, the brand name, and maybe the marketing value of the users, but granting a valuation based on consistently negative profit is somewhat silly.
- Xyik 10y agoThat's debatable since many companies like Amazon are able to turn a profit by sacrificing growth. Good point though and this information is also available in quarterly earnings reports. The main argument I was making really is that people should take a look at some numbers before having such strong opinions. I believe last I checked LinkedIn was profitable.
- golfer 10y agoLinkedIn is not profitable. They lose money every quarter. Revenue is around $800-900MM a quarter though.
- spyckie2 10y agoI've read many complaints about how linkedin is a tool that has so much potential if it was just done right... and no one here is entertaining the possibility that MS is thinking the same way? I know MS has a bad track record for acquisitions but I think this one has a lot of potential.
- kirankn 10y agoSomehow feel that MS - Slack acquisition is coming soon
- grandalf 10y agoThe biggest thing hampering LinkedIn's growth has been such a strong tech market. This is also why many HN readers are not familiar with it. When the market is strong, those with technology skills can find work in a few hours without using any platform. But if the market dips, things like LinkedIn's recommendations will become useful and relevant. Less so for technology workers than for those with softer skills, but far more relevant than they are today. LinkedIn is pretty big in the NYC startup scene because overall people are more ambitious in a career ambition way... Silicon Valley has more ambition to build cool things and so having a LinkedIn profile feels like wearing a suit and having one's teeth professionally whitened and going around formally shaking hands with people. LinkedIn is also one of the few innovators in dark pattern UI research. Each week I get an invitation email accidentally sent by someone over 60 who signed up for LinkedIn and spammed his/her entire Gmail address book with invites. I hope the acquisition isn't being driven by LinkedIn's lead-gen functionality, since that has been the main reason I've considered deleting my profile. Most of the people who attempt to connect are selling something, which reduces the platform's usefulness as a social network. The best thing about the acquisition is that lots of that money will flow back into the startup ecosystem.
- marssaxman 10y agoNot familiar with it? LinkedIn has been working their evil magic for so many years it's hard to imagine how you could be involved in the tech industry at all without having had to fend off at least a little bit of their bullshit. I am totally familiar with them, having ground my way through the process that eventually stops their relentless flow of content-free nag mail, and my feelings can be described in a single word: contempt.
- FunctionalMan 10y agoI just logged in; haven't logged in for about 6 months. There was a bunch of promoted recruiter spam in my inbox and a "feed" that looked like a cluttered version of Facebook. I don't get it at all.
- webtechgal 10y agoI circulated this to some of my friends and one came back thus: So now, LinkedIn will turn SinkedIn !!
- webtechgal 10y agoI'm kind of new here (long time lurker though), so would someone be kind enough to let me know why the down-votes on my comment above? That will help me know better when keep my trap shut... :-)
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- Kazamai 10y agoGood idea to buy LinkedIn, but for $26 BILLION! Isn't that a million times earnings? Way, way over valued. You could hire a team and ad agency to make a better LinkedIn for $10 million...
- mathattack 10y agoThis makes a ton of sense for everyone. LinkedIn is too small to be a dominant platform like Google or Facebook. If someone were to buy it, it would be someone with a strong enterprise presence, with an incomplete social footprint. It would also need to be a company with a high enough market cap to afford the purchase, and PE ratio for it to appear dilutive. Who fits the profile? - IBM - They are in share buyback mode, not major purchases - Oracle - Social may not matter to them - SAP - Too many issues from prior acquisitions - HP - Splitting, but building Microsoft is the ideal buyer. The key is integration. Microsoft doesn't have a great history for integration, but that was also under the prior regime.
- surds 10y agoLinkedIn has a huge presence in the professional users and businesses. A large number of people from non-tech backgrounds never got onto LinkedIn because they never kew of it or didn't really bother to create a profile here. Imagine integrating LinkedIn profiles with Microsoft's professional tools or even Windows. The reach of LinkedIn will be massive if Microsoft gives it a push through Windows. It's likely that this boost does not necessarily convert into increasing revenue, but it can certainly boost the number of active users that LinkedIn has. And I hope, now that it is acquired, LinkedIn will stop pushing us to spam all of our contacts about joining it, updating profiles or whatever.
- tim333 10y agoStock price movements after one day: MSFT down ~ $12bn, LNKD up ~ $9bn. Looks like they overpaid a bit.
- chris-at 10y agoI for one welcome our new Windows overlords! Let's hope they pull another Nokia with this, er, beloved company.
- ralphael 10y agoI know bandwidth is cheap these days but including a 14.9mb cover image on such a major story....?
- myth17 10y agoMost Important Question : Do LinkedIn employees stop getting free food or Microsoft employees get free food now?
- rsyntax 10y agoIMO, Microsoft has the means and resources to sift thru linkedIn metadata to gain an hiring advantage over their competitors. In addition they could probably infer what other companies are doing thru their hiring and searches. There is no other platform like this with this scale another monopoly; human resources.
- keypusher 10y agoConsidering that MS also owns Skype, could we see them combining those two technologies into some kind of interview platform?
- datashovel 10y agoLast time I was so perplexed with a valuation was back in 2007/2008 when BlackBerry was trading at over $100 per share.
- syngrog66 10y agoSmart for Microsoft and LinkedIn. Yet also means I expect LinkedIn to become even more distasteful to me, increasing the chance I abandon it. I also see no paradox with these two opposing observations. :-)
- coroutines 10y agoSomething something private information changing hands in buyouts...
- known 10y agoWhy buy? Why didn't MS invest?
- nu2ycombinator 10y agoI hope they don't do what they did for Nokia.
- ClassyPuff 10y agoAwesome.... Sounds pretty interesting, Microsoft aacquired LinkedIn for $26B... Wao!!! Heavy amount.... Microsoft is progressing fine. Hope it would not be just like Nokia.
- apapli 10y agoLNKD is extremely powerful when paired with CRM. To the point that MSFT might have seen this as a better choice than buying Salesforce, especially as their own in house CRM offering (Dynamics) is becoming very strong, and far more likeable for end users. The biggest loser from this deal was Salesforce, they will be gutted. This move took me completely by surprise, and I'm pretty impressed in Nadella for pulling it off. Although LNKD is a pretty ordinary proposition (financially - and what else really matters nowadays) by itself, 1 + 1 can equal 3 if it is linked tightly with Microsoft's productivity products such as Skype for Business, Outlook, CRM etc. And MSFT took advantage of LNKDs poor recent performance to buy them "cheap" while making their management look like hero's when the market was beginning to think they were anything but.
- chrshawkes 10y agoyou work at hubspot with that ridiculous terminology? 1 + 1 = 2 period.
- apapli 10y agoI'm not sure what you mean? No I don't have anything to do with hubspot...
- _cipher_ 10y agoToo pricey. They could buy more spambots with less $$.
- gk1 10y agoI think Salesforce is about to get much stronger competition from Microsoft's Dynamics CRM. If they connect Dynamics CRM with LinkedIn's massive database of orgs and professionals--a treasure trove for marketing and sales teams--and embargoes other CRM software from that data[0], I can see them taking market share from Salesforce. [0] LinkedIn did exactly this when it acquired Rapportive—another popular sales tool. They let Rapportive continue accessing LinkedIn data but blocked competitors from doing so. PS - They mention that, as a result of this acquisition, Office 365 users might be able to invite other professionals to collaborate on their documents or projects. It's interesting that they chose such a weak example, when it's clear there are much greater benefits they'll be able to offer. One I already mentioned, and many more are mentioned in this thread. Probably trying to keep competitors guessing?
- anonbanker 10y agoTime to delete my LinkedIn account, or otherwise corrupt its contents before MS swallows it all. Microsoft doesn't have the right to my intellectual property.
- cenriqueortiz 10y agoFrom MSFT perspective -- good move. From LinkedIn perspective, good move as well -- they have great backing and got a great deal ($). As a user, I'm sad to see this -- the end of LinkedIn as we know it. I've no interest in MSFT holding my personal info online CV presence. Perhaps time to move to someplace else.
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