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Good news probably for the fortunes of LinkedIn since they had been struggling recently. Also of interest to those of us who post in groups and elsewhere on LinkedIn. WIll be interesting to see where Microsoft takes this. Maybe signals a trend to greater presence in social media?
Or it is Microsoft's way to get LinkedIn into their cloud. I used to be a big skype user but Microsoft really screwed it up. Expect the same for LinkedIn.
Brings up the question of the future of "professional collaboration media". We know for consumers, Facebook and Instagram and Pinterest are winning the battle. On the professional side, it's not so clear, with players like Jive Software and salesforce.com. I would not be surprised to see a Microsoft IoT strategy like that of salesforce.com in CRM. It's also a Microsoft play to be on every mobile device. This is kind of like a baseball trade - hard to say today, let's talk again in 5 years.
Actually another interesting company to watch for professional collaboration (within a company) is Slack. As for Microsoft screwing up acquisitions, under previous management I wouldn't be surprised. But Satya Nadella looks like a much more forward-thinking CEO. I wouldn't write off what MS may do under him so quickly.
It will be interesting to see the gwoth rate after the acquisition:
But Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella emphasized to Business Insider that the deal was also about LinkedIn itself, which will be able to grow more quickly with Microsoft's global distribution: "LinkedIn is already an amazing asset, growing at a very fast clip."
As a recruiter we kind of have a love/hate relationship with Linkedin as they have done quite a bit to take things away/ makes things more difficult for us in the past few years..
It will be interesting to see what strategy they take towards the people that fueled their growth/ the paid side of LI and what they do with that.
Oh no, I've really enjoyed using LinkedIn over the years, and now the dark side Microsoft is the new owner, this is bad news for me and I expect Microsoft to start meddling with the LinkedIn operations. Let's see if Microsoft can actually leave LinkedIn alone to their own ideas.
Wall Street had mixed reactions to Microsoft's surprise announcement on Monday that it would buy LinkedIn for $26.2 billion. One firm, Jefferies, titled its instant analysis about the deal, "Large Acquisition, Large Valuation, Large Risk," and compared it with past Microsoft acquisitions Skype, Nokia, and aQuantive. "Most would categorize at least two of those three prior acquisitions as missteps, and the third is difficult to assess given the Skype brand expansion within Microsoft," wrote Jefferies.
But LinkedIn is a lot bigger deal than those previous acquisitions, as this chart from Statista shows. As Jefferies writes, "We expect similar results with this acquisition, except this one is much bigger at more than a year of free cash flow, so we’d expect the effect (and the risk) to be that much greater."
Most would categorize at least two of those three prior acquisitions as missteps, and the third is difficult to assess given the Skype brand expansion within Microsoft," wrote Jefferies.
"missteps" is really a very kind word. In 2015 Microsoft shut down its phone division acquired from Nokia and took a $7.6 billion write-off (more than the $7.2 billion spent for Nokia acquisition).
In reality, it's a disaster.
How will the Linkedin acquisition perform? In my opinion, Linedin does have some good product/services but it doesn't deserve this $26.2 billion valuation.
Or it is Microsoft's way to get LinkedIn into their cloud. I used to be a big skype user but Microsoft really screwed it up. Expect the same for LinkedIn.
I couldn't agree more. Look what happened to a world leading brand like Nokia after Microsoft took it over. Nokia went from being the in-mobile brand to today when most youngsters "have never heard of Nokia" .. Then there is Minecraft. I have a young son who adored playing Minecraft ... since Microsoft took it over he started to play it less and less until he completely stopped. I asked him WHY? He said ... and this is so telling, as it's from a real adoring user with no axe to grind .. "it doesn't feel like Minecraft any more" ... and he now has replaced his Minecraft activities with Roblox".
