The Microsoft Acquisition
Welcome to episode 118 of the LinkedInformed podcast at the end of a truly historic week for LinkedIn.
As you would expect I am going to concentrate all of this episode on evaluating Microsoft's acquisition of LinkedIn.
Advantages for Microsoft
- Entry into the social media space. An area they have neglected to get involved with previously which was beginning to look like a serious weakness.
- An opportunity to increase sales of Office 365 via extensive integration with LinkedIn’s functionality.
- Dynamics (Their CRM solution) will benefit the most from this acquisition and potentially allow it to become the market leader (currently Salesforce).
- Content from LinkedIn publishing allowing greater advertising opportunities.
- Big data. Rich information about people and their online behaviour.
Advantages for LinkedIn
- $26 billion!
- Greater resources to enable new products such as Profinder to be launched and rapidly expanded.
- $26 billion!
- Use of Microsoft’s massive cloud infrastructure.
- A way out of their stock-based compensation conundrum.
- $2.3 billion into Reid Hoffman’s bank account!
Advantages for Members
- I expect the under-resourced help centre to improve significantly
- Skype integration
- Integration with Outlook 365 & Dynamics.
- Better distribution of published posts
Disadvantages for Members
- Less Google optimisation
- Another secretive ‘closed’ culture
- Focus on corporates at the expense of SMB’s
- And …..
Mentioned in this episode:
This show was created by the original host of the show, Mark Williams.
