5 ms·
Holy fuck that is a lot of money. How on earth is LinkedIn worth anywhere near that?!
by satysin 10y ago
Holy 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
- TheArcane 10y agoLinkedIn is Monster+Facebook on steroids.
- petercooper 10y agoRecruiting. It's huge.
- Trundle 10y agoAlso just B2B sales in general. Anything that makes getting in touch with decision makers easier is basically a money faucet.
- pi-err 10y agoAnd isn't Linkedin the only network who got people to pay subscriptions? That's extremely interesting for MS. On demographics alone, though, the deal doesn't seem to make sense.
- JetSpiegel 10y agoI read this in Trump's voice.
- petercooper 10y agoRecruiting on LinkedIn is huge. Very, very, very big. This is really a not dumb deal by Microsoft, believe me. I don't know but I've heard from hundreds of people who've told me this is a huge move. It will be amazing.
- ZanyProgrammer 10y agoIt seems like LinkedIn is more the butt of jokes now than in its heyday when everyone was advised to get on it. Heyday being 2011-ish? Or is there a large number of C-level type people who went to elite colleges and are SV VCs who use it a lot, who are just out of my social league?
- ebbv 10y agoThis just isn't true. There's nothing about LinkedIn that makes it any more indispensable than those sites or Monster.com or any other site popular with recruiters in the past. This is going to go down in history as one of the most overpriced, worst acquisitions of all time. LinkedIn has already become more associated with being spammy than with any positive connotations.
- zimpenfish 10y agoBeing spammy -and- having its user database liberated at frequent intervals.
- oblio 10y agoWell, regular users don't mind the spam as much and might not even know or realize the true impact of those account leaks. Plus Microsoft is quite likely to take care of both problems. At least on the security front, since 2005 or so, I haven't heard of any leaks on their part.
- daw___ 10y agoThis can only be my impression, however, given the amount of "LinkedIn trainers" people and given the amount of people that are willing to pay a LinkedIn trainer to enhance their profiles, I would not be that sure that there's nothing indispensable in LinkedIn.
- threeseed 10y agoI take it you don't work in enterprise ? It's terribly popular and I would imagine if you're over 40 then you may well be spending more time on it than Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Snapchat combined. Given Microsoft is trying to double down on the corporate space it is a pretty smart buy. Being about to push Azure/Office 365 through it could be invaluable.
- ebbv 10y agoI'm not currently in enterprise but I've worked at Ford and U of Mich. before so I have experience in that space. Thing do tend to get entrenched in enterprise space more so than in smaller businesses, but even still LinkedIn doesn't have any tentacles that make it irreplaceable. When the next thing comes along, enterprise users will be slower to switch off LinkedIn, but they will do so. If Microsoft had paid a lot less I could maybe see this purchase being more logical, but at $26 billion I just cannot agree this is a smart buy on any level.
- mliker 10y agoclearly you know what you're talking about...</sarcasm>. One word: ads.
- c_c_c 10y agoThis is the most bizarre thing I've heard. People want Snapchat, Instagram. People have LinkedIn. No one wants it. It's a dinosaur. People using it actively just haven't realized it's dead already.
- laser 10y agoWell they did do $3 billion in revenue last year. http://finance.yahoo.com/q/is?s=LNKD+Income+Statement&annual http://finance.yahoo.com/q/is?s=LNKD+Income+Statement&annual
- graeham 10y agoThat valuation should be for more like $3B in profit!
- aNoob7000 10y agoBased on the Yahoo link it looks like they lost money this year and last.
- dcgoss 10y agoTheir net income is 0.6% of their valuation.
- aNoob7000 10y agoThey loss money, right?
- mrweasel 10y agoRevenue isn't really relevant when you're losing money as fast as Linkedin. They have no real competitors, and they still aren't able to turn a profit. Even $3 billion is to much.
- jonknee 10y agoThey're not losing money all that fast and are spending heavily on growth. They also have a lot of money in the bank ($3.1B in cash and short term securities) so that's pretty much exactly what it's there for.
- overcast 10y agoWith a $-166 million Net Income.
- kxd 10y agoAs someone else pointed out, their revenue is pretty decent. But their biggest asset is likely key staff as well as, as social networks go, that it has the cleanest/most useful database of users.
- dannypgh 10y agoThere are far cheaper ways of getting LinkedIn's database!
- tonyedgecombe 10y agoSQL Injection?
- jokoon 10y agoAn existing user base is priceless. In france, when you sell a shop, you also sell for the "fond de commerce", meaning that an existing list of client is part of the price. You also have to consider that so many companies use linkedin. It's an industry standard for professional networking, which has a different meaning than networking with friend ("consumer" networking I guess ?).
- shubhamjain 10y agoI am surprised why people think that amount is outrageous. LinkedIn has so far been pathetic at everything except magically mantaining their monopoly of professional network but I believe it is far more valuable than it is now. I am not sure what has held LinkedIn back these many years but it is certainly possible that the new leadership can push a lot of great changes to the platform.