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Microsoft Is Buying LinkedIn For $26.2 Billion (microsoft.com)
Microsoft on Monday announced it is acquiring LinkedIn, the social network for professionals, for a whopping sum of $26 billion -- or $196 per share, in cash. The transactions, the companies say, has already been approved by both boards. As part of the agreement, LinkedIn will get to keep its branding, and will become part of Microsoft's productivity and business processes segment. Jeff Weiner will remain CEO of LinkedIn, and now report to Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella. In a statement, Nadella said: The LinkedIn team has grown a fantastic business centered on connecting the world's professionals. Together we can accelerate the growth of LinkedIn, as well as Microsoft Office 365 and Dynamics as we seek to empower every person and organization on the planet.LinkedIn has over 430M members on its network. LinkedIn's purchase marks Microsoft's 196th acquisition of another company -- it is incidentally also its most expensive purchase. Four years ago, Weiner laughed at the idea of a Microsoft buyout. Update: 06/13 13:31 GMT by M :According to Bloomberg, LinkedIn shares surged 49 percent in premarket trading in New York to $194.63. Microsoft fell 3.7 percent to $49.60.
Seriously. Whatever M$ has ever touched, turned to manure in short order. Think Skype et al.
On the other hand, as M$ is actually one of the less creepy tech companies out there these days (with Linkedin being very near the top), this might actually end up *improving* the business ethics of Linkedin. :)
it will become LinkedOut.
It was fun while it lasted.
I can just imagine how Microsoft will use this together with all the "telemetry" obtained via windows 10, swiftkey, code compiled with VS2015, skype conversations, office 360 documents, etc.
So, I did the only sensible thing, and have just deleted my linkedin profile, as I had done at the acquisition time with swiftkey. Bye bye samaritan, you will probably still get my data but will have to try harder...
I'm hoping I'm wrong but every recent major acquisition by MS has been followed by a huge thud. But maybe MS will leave it as is and not screw it up.
So will Microsoft employees be able to look for a new job without having their boss stop by and say, "LinkedIn tells us you're not happy here. Here's two weeks pay, goodbye."
It was vaguely useful as a sort of low-volume Facebook, provided you didn't get caught up in all their astroturf articles and "blogs". Now, forget it.
There goes the neighborhood.
Microsoft buys yet another Internet giant.
Excuse me, I have to go delete my LinkedIn account now.
Silicon Valley. Can we look forward to Remy the cartoon resumé leading you through your LinkedIn profile completion?
"Win treats sysadmins better than users. Mac treats users better than sysadmins. Linux treats everyone like sysadmins."
Sure, Microsoft hasn't displayed any competence when it comes to creating or running a social media site, so what's the purpose behind buying LinkedIn?
The data? The technology (wtf)? What's the move here, because I'm not seeing it. There's no obvious tie-in to the x-box. There's nothing to integrate into their OS or Office. Skype is dying on the vine -- and again, what's there to integrate into the existing software? Autopopulate a post to the professional dude-bro's hangout? What sense does that make?
The problem is the price...$26 billion all cash deal!!!
If i were dabbling in stocks i would short MSFT immediately. This is stupider than their NOKIA acquisition. Most of these companies are run by mediocre people with no imagination and too much money.
Tat Tvam Asi
Those whopping numbers show one thing: how desperate capitalism is.
Years and years of simulating exponential growth outpace any real growth (which can't possibly be exponential in a real world).
Watch those inflated piles of cash, which are mostly virtual desperately seeking "investment opportunities" which are even more virtual.
26 * 10^9 dollars. This is 3.5 fucking dollars per human being out there. There's no so much money.
Really curious what's gonna happen when this house of cards breaks down.
LinkedIn is a frigging joke. Maybe the intial idea was okay, but then they let any random idiot "endorse" you for skills. When I started seeing my connections endorsing me for skills they did not know I possessed I realized that I could no longer trust any endorsements for people I did not know.
Now I just use LinkedIn to see what people look like, nothing else.
If Slashdot were chemistry it would look like this:Cadaverine
The good thing about buying LinkedIn is you don't need to ask them to transfer any their user database over to you - you can just go download the torrent!
60 bucks per user? Speaking in a purely personal capacity, that's way over the odds.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Microsoft may as well have burned their $26b cash to keep some homeless people warm. It would've been a better use than to buy LinkedIn.
Same shit. We'll have some dumb ass dual login shit, either a LinkedIn account or a fucking live account, then every link will require logging in again and again without remembering credentials. A major company fucked up Sykpe, now they'll do it to LinkedIn.
> Less creepy? Try windows 10.
Just try DECLINING Windows 10. What MS does then is creepy.
Okay, so the Windows 10 telemetry is creepy too.
"Whatever M$ has ever touched, turned to manure in short order." Microsoft has a long history of managers lacking social ability. For example, former Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer was often called Monkey Boy because of his obvious lack of ability to understand other people and interact in a healthy manner.
"... business ethics of Linkedin." It is interesting to me to see that someone else has the same opinion of LinkedIn.
It amazes me how seldom people deal with the conflicts and try to defend themselves.
It might be time to close my LinkedIn account and get the flock outta there. I've pretty much avoided social networking - no Facebook, no Twitter, etc. - but LinkedIn seemed to be almost a necessity for job hunting. But I read recently that I'm already out of contention for most jobs anyway, because I'm not on FB, and because my online presence is mostly pseudonymous, which means it doesn't exist as far as most prospective employers are concerned. Apparently that's a real red flag for HR types. So I guess I'm hooped anyway, and dumping LinkedIn won't significantly hinder my already dismal job prospects.
'The Economy' is a giant Ponzi scheme whose most pitiable suckers are the youngest among us and the yet-unborn.
Lets guess: When you create an MS account, you are also included in the LinkedIn user catalogue. In due time, when you want to edit your profile, anything but basic edits will require an Office 365 subscription.
In the Dynamics suite, it is not only about Employee Master, Customer Master, but also about the Organization domain: You will need to model your organization in a way accessible to LinkedIn, and instances of today's Dynamics suite will benefit from being able to do B2B better by getting direct access to the org structures, and signature rights, of people also in your business partner companies.
Also, as Skype is not on the way up in hype, one also procures a user base for Skype.
And, how will this work with Microsofts extensive 3rd-party strategy: I assume that to work with 'higher tier' 3rd parties, you need LinkedIn profiles for remote access. Furthermore, 3rd parties will be able to purchase access to organizational structures in LinkedIn.
All in all, some parts are actually of benefit to corporations. However, this is also a way of getting organizations onto the higher end of the Microsoft agreement scale: Expensive, not necessary, but does allower less competent persons to administer large amount of users.
This is not about technology. This is a quite clever ecosystem move, an art many of today's players seem to have forgotten. Imagine some next steps: Product promotion, sales, information from Dynamics instances, across the ecosystem enabled by the mesh of business users actually on LinkedIn. Microsoft does need to counter FB, Apple, Samsung, Sony and Ali, whom by them targetting B2C users is building a platform for going for the lucrative B2B.
Signed, Lars Bratthall.
except this is a very bad day for the spies. They may not be forcing spyware on the world soon.
Microsoft's old business model doesn't work anymore... when that happens staying still === death, and trying new things costs money... however being Microsoft they have masses of capital to burn, so everything is worth the risk, so they do that (they try everything) this seems to have been their business strategy for the past decade... everything is worth the risk, they are basically too big to fail provided they keep trying things. It's almost like the random mutation component of evolution.
The massive downside to this unfocused approach is that they appear to be flippant, inconsistent and undedicated to anything new they do. So even setting aside the many other issues people have against Microsoft such as undertones of malice and exploitation towards users, world domination etc, it makes their products seem even more undesirable.
...430 million of LinkedIn users receiving a forced upgrade to Windows 10 in 3, 2, 1 seconds!
.
The amount of data that Microsoft has purchased, and will be able to harvest on a continual basis, has just increased by orders of magnitude.
.
Data harvesting appears to be Microsoft's new strategic focus.
No comment
LinkedIn is little more than a whore market and an ego window for losers. Not surprising that Microsoft picked it up.
Well, do eat your lampshade if you enjoy doing so: i stick to some roquefort.
As to the non-sequitur... I'd be glad to explain it to you in a way you can follow :-)
It just popped up, "All the information in this computer is scheduled to be posted to LinkedIn in 10 minutes" and there were just two buttons "Do it now" and "Spam all email addresses in this machine beseeching them to join LinkedIn with more dire warnings".
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
I stopped using LinkedIn when I saw that it was showing me who had recently viewed my profile. Why? Because if it tells me who has recently viewed my profile, then it also tells other people when I have viewed *their* profile. Sorry, but I don't want other people to know when I have viewed their profile. Not even Facebook does this - i.e, Facebook doesn't let people know who's 'stalking' them (or just viewing their profiles innocently).
Well, I will drop my LinkedIn account, saved images, etc... tonight.
As for job hiring, I do not feel inclined to be fodder for the buzzword-specialists and
middle-management-think people who are HR. Or for MicroSoft, either.
Neither have been what I conceive of as being "good" or "advantageous" to me, my career, or my life quality.
I also found more am more odd that so many users have nothing to say in this kind of transaction.
Microsoft are driven by greed and blind stupidity. Just look at Windows 8 and 10 for evidence.
They are no longer led by engineering geniuses but marketing baboons...
Elon Musk took his $100million and made two multi billion dollar companies (Tesla and SpaceX) and here we have Microsoft demonstrating how to start with $26 Billion and throw it out of the window.
Without engineering talent leading the way, their can be very little innovation, motivation or compelling products. RIP LinkedLn
Time to unlink() LinkedIn.
If you disagree with me on social issues, then it's pretty clear that you are a narrow-minded bigot.
So now I have to upload mi resume to facebook?
When trying to download my data from LinkedIn now I get "Maximum Transaction Time exceeded".
I can imagine that there's a crapload of people trying to bail out now!
If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker would destroy civilization.
There goes the neighborhood.
I still do not see the purpose or value in LinkedIn. It seems to be pretty useless except to stroke ones own ego. It's a great place to find shameless self-promoters, though.
Can we please, please, please stop with the Clippy jokes?
I get it, you used a computer in the 90's and therefor have street cred...
The thing is, even at the time, Clippy was not that annoying. And anyone who knew how to install software, even then, could easily not install the stupid thing by doing a custom install and unselecting that feature.
Clippy was annoying, but we see WAY worse stuff these days anyway.
My eyes reflect the stars and a smile lights up my face.
M$ get's even MORE control over common services.
I suppose now, my LinkedIn account will be automatically upgraded to a 'Premium Account' whether I want to or not.
Clippy joining forces with linkedin ?
FUCK NOPE!
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
Well, one last profile I need to maintain, seriously, I know it is predjudicial of me, but I wan nothing to do with anything Microsoft related, so I will delete my account there tonight.
Of course, the W10 telemetry is seriously nosey. But as this is M$ we are talking about, I ultimately cannot see them doing much useful with it.
It's not what Microsoft willingly does with the telemetry data as much as what third parties can compel MIcrosoft to do with it. For example, even basic telemetry collects a list of applications and device drivers on a system, as well as the IMEI of any connected air card. I can think of cases where the list of apps and drivers may be evidence against a user in a civil or criminal case alleging copyright infringement or circumvention of digital restrictions management.
That little bastard Clippy...better not "fix" my resume.
I only look human.
My mother is a halfling and my dad is an ogre, so that makes me an Ogreling
I am shocked by all of the negative comments here. This was a great purchase by MS and I'm surprised they didn't jump sooner. Microsoft makes a huge chunk of its revenue from office workers. LinkedIn is the social graph of office workers. The two are a perfect fit with each other.
Imagine office integration where you can easily share documents, send messages, and video conference among LinkedIn contacts. That's just the beginning, with a bit more work on the LinkedIn side, the social graph on LinkedIn could easily translate to the company's entire intranet, a public/private social network amalgam. Hope that MS is thinking this big.
Fast Federal Court and I.T.C. updates
If you want a professional presence that makes a difference, get active on github and post examples of your work: products, projects, utilities, documents, etc. Contribute to an open project there, even if it's just to clean up documentation (or add docs or howtos).
Constructive examples of your work will say more about you to prospective employers than a LinkedIn e-resume ever could.
"What's the move here, because I'm not seeing it." I agree. Also, it seems that Microsoft's CEO Satya Nadella doesn't see it, either:
...while simultaneously partnering on product integration plans with the Office 365 and
Dynamics teams." So, the LinkedIn team will "focus" on
two things at the same time? How will job-getting be "integrated" with typing a document? Will Clippy jump up and say, "That's boring! Wouldn't you like a better job?"
Quotes from Satya Nadella:
"I have been learning about LinkedIn for some time..." That's not the sort of thing to say about a $26.2 billion purchase. He learned for "some time"? No one else was involved? There was no detailed examination by many managers?
Corporate jargon: [I have been] "also reflecting on how networks can truly differentiate cloud services."
Corporate jargon: "I consider if an asset will expand our opportunity -- specifically, does it expand our total addressable market?" What is the difference between a market and an "addressable market"?
"Is this asset riding secular usage and technology trends?" What?? I wondered if I understood the meaning of the word "secular". I did. It means "denoting attitudes, activities, or other things that have no religious or spiritual basis". I can certainly agree that Microsoft is not religious or spiritual. Satya Nadella wants Microsoft to "ride trends".
CREEPY: "...vibrant network that brings together a professional's information in LinkedIn's public network with the information in Office 365..." Wow! Microsoft will be watching what you type?
VERY CREEPY: "This combination will make it possible for new experiences such as a LinkedIn newsfeed that serves up articles based on the project you are working on and Office suggesting an expert to connect with via LinkedIn to help with a task you're trying to complete."
SCARY: "...new opportunities will be created for monetization through individual and organization subscriptions and targeted advertising." To me, that means that I should create an even greater distance between myself and Microsoft. I don't want to be "monetized".
RENT ONLY? "...we have moved Office from a set of productivity tools to a cloud service across any platform and device." Translation: We don't want you to be able to buy our software. We make more money if you rent it.
"... we can reinvent ways to make professionals more productive" They are already invented, but you will re-invent them?
"reinventing selling, marketing and talent management business processes" Satya Nadella, why do you make wild statements with no specific meaning? (Also, no Oxford comma.)
"I can't wait to see what our teams dream up..." Translation: At present, he has NO idea what Microsoft will do. He will wait to see. Dreaming.
"A big part of this deal is accelerating LinkedIn's growth." Perhaps LinkedIn is at the END of its growth.
Corporate jargon: "...keep the LinkedIn team focused on driving results..."
"
"... we'll pick key projects where we can go deep together that will ultimately result in new experiences for customers." Apparent translation: We have NO idea at present what we will do.
Corporate jargon: "... sharing our vision to empower professionals".
My opinion: Satya Nadella, what you said above indicates you are not able to manage a company. Apparently you were chosen to be CEO because you were the least annoying candidate. The fact that you were chosen indicates that the Microsoft Board of Directors is not competent.
The good news is, I bet at this very moment, at least 10 groups are thinking of creating a new linkedin. And given the absolute lack of technology behind, they will have something ready in two weeks.
Has Xbox won a generation yet? The PlayStation 2 soundly beat the original Xbox, and the underpowered Wii beat the more powerful Xbox 360 in all regions. Early Xbox One sales were marred by loss of goodwill from #dealwithit, and the PlayStation 4 is reportedly beating its competition nearly two to "One" after two years.
In order to better enhance your LinkedIn experience, you must be using Windows 10 to access LinkedIn. Can't wait for them to tinker with search results too for windows admins/devs.
It's only a matter of time until MS applies their special brand of bullshit to LI... just like they did to Skype(which is now missing features and it far less useful than it used to be...) and countless others...
Guess it's time to move on.
Microsoft isn't buying anything. They already know who is on LinkedIn as does any other pleb in his basement who knows how to scrape. LinkedIn's databases were [hacked](http://motherboard.vice.com/read/another-day-another-hack-117-million-linkedin-emails-and-password) and so that site really is worthless. What Microsoft has done here is prevent someone else from owning that information and using it. I predict some lawsuits from Microsoft as part of their cost recovery.
What has Microsoft really bought? A $26bn address book. Bravo.
The dangers of knowledge trigger emotional distress in human beings.
MS is in a horsewhip business (Desktop OS and Office)
By calling desktop operating systems an obsolete "horsewhip business", I assume you're referring to the purported obsolescence of the desktop in favor of iOS and Android. If this is the case, then what should instead be used for creating mobile-friendly websites and mobile apps? If not, what exactly did you mean?
By calling Microsoft Office an obsolete "horsewhip business", were you referring more to LibreOffice or to Google Docs as its competitor? If Google Docs, how well does that work offline, such as on a laptop or tablet while riding transit that doesn't provide Wi-Fi?
"This combination will make it possible for new experiences such as a LinkedIn newsfeed that serves up articles based on the project you are working on and Office suggesting an expert to connect with via LinkedIn to help with a task you're trying to complete."
Creepy is isn't quite the right word...hmmmm...what is it, what is it? Ah, here it is: inane. What professional wants to be subjected to a constant stream of hints and suggestions that they "utilize" some dork they've never heard of because MS thinks it can help them do what they already know how to do?
MS seems to have this idea that its users wander about in a fog and the fog could be lifted if only they would use its products to their full potential. If they would take the $26 Billion and spend it on security and bug fixing, then we could use their products to their full potential...well, someone could...theoretically...in the fullness of time.....
The fall in M$ stock price after this announcement indicates that investors don't see this as strengthening M$'s position. It makes sense for LinkedIn stock price to rise as there is now a public offer on the table and the price rises to meet that. Normally, though, you would expect the buyers stock price to rise if the acquisition was seen as being favorable. As it stands right now, investors are saying M$ is worth less with LinkedIn than with it.
The ONLY value of M$ acquiring LinkedIn is marketing data. They have just bought a database of thousands of potential skilled professionals which they can spam with offers of M$ products, and the mass exodus reveals that the LinkedIn community is having none of it.
Eternity: will that be smoking, or non-smoking? I Corinthians 6:9-10
I am so grateful that I never created a LinkedIn account. I receive requests from people everyday to link in to their profiles, but since I have no social media accounts I've declined getting Linked In. But recently I've been thinking that maybe I should at least have a LinkedIn account for networking. Thank goodness I dodged that bullet.
Clippy is a joke in part because it was annoying, but moreso in how it was actually pretty condescending in many ways toward the user.
The described use case can strike people in the same way. Auto-suggesting guys on linked in who claim to have experience with what you are trying to do? It seems a bit silly in the same way that clippy's 'suggestions' were silly at the time, all while being condescending (unintentionally). You seem to be trying to project manage this... poorly, here's a guy who would be better than you...
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
LinkedIn has been a ceaseless source of spam from the day I signed up, and serves no useful purpose that I can discern. I occasionally used it to check out potential new hires I was interviewing, but most of what is there is a circle jerk of highly exaggerated self-hype chased by droves of predatory head-hunters. This is the (very) small push I need to delete my account from it. I already stopped using it years ago. It was beyond useless.
That's not the end of it though. I have no doubt that Microsoft will use this acquisition to step up LinkedIn spam beyond mere email, and drive 'opportunities' into everyone's face during their daily work activities. As the IT manager of a small company, it would be irresponsible of me to allow a 7x24 channel explicitly designed for poaching employees into the business. I have already long since banned Windows 10 entirely, and blocked as much windows instrumentation as I possibly can at the firewall. This move more than motivates me to evict Microsoft entirely.
From an article on The Verge:
While many financial analysts will be inspecting the details more closely, a lot of onlookers simply want to know... why? Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella has sent an internal memo to staff about the LinkedIn acquisition, and it attempts to answer why the company is interested in the social networking giant.
Nadella hints that LinkedIn will help play into its Office software in the future. One feature will be LinkedIn's newsfeed "that serves up articles based on the project you are working on and Office suggesting an expert to connect with via LinkedIn to help with a task you're trying to complete." Nadella sees a future where LinkedIn can be more intelligent and feed into Office 365. "New opportunities will be created for monetization through individual and organization subscriptions and targeted advertising," says Nadella.
I was thinking that M$ perhaps was divining some untapped big-data potential with this acquisition. But after reading this, that's one fucked up boondoggle. A newsfeed? Really? M&A has jumped the shark on this one. Either that, or Nadella is hoping for some good karma out of this one.
Obviously they'll be monetizing it by charging experts for the right to appear as an Office 365 recommendation. It costs Microsoft nothing to present these ads to Office users. So even if these ads annoy 99.9% of us, if just 0.1% respond and pay the advertised expert, it becomes "worth it" to them.
Given how Microsoft shoved a lot of the telemetry features of Windows 10 down the throats of Windows 7 and 8 users via updates, I'm going to be proactive and start turning off the "Give me updates for Microsoft products and check for new optional Microsoft software when I update Windows" option on all my computers with older versions of Office installed.
Just recently I had an actual recruiter, representing an actual job, contact me via linkedin. I've been in discussion with him and the company he represents - whose identity I know - and things look potentially promising. Otherwise I've had lots of flotsam on there (and more recently I had three recruiters from India ask to add me for some reason). I'd say the signal:noise is pretty low there already, and I can't imagine it will get any better with MS calling the shots.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
Good idea - thanks. I'm mostly a hardware guy so the advice isn't as applicable as it would be to many others here, but I'll search for some open hardware projects that I can make contributions to.
'The Economy' is a giant Ponzi scheme whose most pitiable suckers are the youngest among us and the yet-unborn.
they just bought the Facebook of the unemployed! Maybe they bought it for their own use?
70% or so of the people I know on linkedin have profiles where the truth has been massaged to a great extent. even some with outright lies. Its value to me is nothing.as the data is probably wrong.
in fact my profile just contains something like 'as most people here don't tell the truth, I fail to see its value'. And i STILL get friend requests!
Um.. OK.
And why would they need to buy LinkedIn for that exactly? Microsoft already OWNS the office environment. And yet they still can't get it right. At the company I work for we are a Microsoft shop. In the last couple of years our IM switched from Lync to Skype and now we've just recently gone to Cisco Jabber. Mind you - we are a total Microsoft shop, and we went with one of their competitor for IM. Who knows, maybe Jabber was part of the deal when we switched from Lync/Skype for meetings to Webex. Because that didn't work well either. The one thing that Microsoft did do was get themselves embedded into companies and for years they really did a decent job of integrating things and making them work well together. I think they are struggling to keep up though.
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
"New opportunities may be created for monetization through individual and organization subscriptions and targeted advertising if an hereto unforeseen creative spark strikes the Microsoft VP placed in charge, and the resulting flying pigs set to work and develop a killer app grander than the ribbon and Windows 8."
FTFY
and as long as you're investing money so wisely, Nadella, toss me a round-off fraction of that $26 billion and I'll pay off my mortgage. At least that way, something tangible will result from this investment.
Take it easy, Charlie, I've got an Angle...
For just $12 a month you can opt out of LinkedIn.
Inheritance is the sincerest form of nepotism.
Brown goes down.
Your quotes brought something exceedingly relevant to mind:
These all sound like features a call center or outsourced tech contractor in India would use to CYA on a project they lacked the qualifications to bid on, but did anyway. Given certain previous work by Nadella as CEO, this sounds in line with their outsource early and often policy. Also a great way to connect all those out of work but knowledgable American (or american educated) professionals with their replacements so as to make a few bucks advising them on how to architect the software or in hindsight fix their mistakes.
Is that too cynical of a view to take?
No more listing of M$ Winblows, M$ Oriffice, and M$ Visual Stupido as secondary skills to my GNU Linux and UNIX talents.
Directive #1, staff our competitors with morons.
So, making a monopoly of a referral firm wasn't such a good idea after all.
https://www.youtube.com/c/BrendaEM
They had that conversation and the NSA told them what was needed to gain their support (and political contacts to shoot down the monopoly redux investigation. Hint: If the NSA is like MI5/6 and is using criminal-scale evidence as blackmail against politicians to sway policy, then Win10+LinkedIn would be a huge boon to them, akin to Google Services+Search history.) It would be nice to believe it was just paranoia rather than intended operation, but anybody doubting that now really hasn't been paying attention.
valuation.. they'll be writing a good chunk of that off before long.
But I can agree that it loses you a lot of work opportunities and that nowadays most of the jobs expect far too much personal information to even consider you for an unqualified position (which I refuse to give on principle since privacy is supposed to be one one of the founding tenets of this country. If not, then get rid of the nudity laws so I can be properly privacy free in public and unconcerned with the consequences.)
> One feature will be LinkedIn's newsfeed "that serves up articles based
> on the project you are working on and Office suggesting an expert
> to connect with via LinkedIn to help with a task you're trying to complete".
Question... how the BLEEP will they know what task you're trying to complete? Telemetry? Remember, he's not talking about Linked-In's standard job listings, but about a one-off project that an employee is currently working on.
I'm not repeating myself
I'm an X window user; I'm an ex-Windows user
lmao
"New opportunities will be created for monetization..." for $26 BILLION ?!?
They only need like a few billion people to take them up on it.
Is it just me or does $57 a head sound rather expensive when they aren't even 'customers'. How can that data be THAT valuable?
Cable companies pay $1000+ a head when they change hands but at least i can see where they expect the money to come from as they ALL pay something and will probably continue to do so. I see neither here..
fuck sites like facebook and linkedn
all you are doing by participating in those sites are making jews rich
assholes
Who said M$ can last a decade with all that cash they have? All they need is acquisitions like this one to completely obliterate themselves in a jiffy. Looks like M$ will soon go the Yahoo way.
This. I think LinkedIn suddenly reached critical mass just a couple years ago. Before then, love it or hate it, everyone just kinda ignored it. Now I suddenly have so many former co-workers on it, that it's actually somewhat interesting to keep up with what they're all doing. It's big and functional enough that it's a rival to Facebook now, which is actually a pretty big deal. And unlike Facebook, I'm actually comfortable "friending" bosses and co-workers there without feeling that worlds are colliding with my decidedly unprofessional childhood friends and feeds that dominate F*book.
Plus, every big corporation I've worked for lately has tried to, er, "leverage internal synergies" through running their own internal enterprise social network site where people (or rather the corp. legal) can feel comfortable sharing proprietary activities. (like Yammer and the ilk that feel like poor clones of twitter/FB). I can see the LinkedIn acquisition playing well with ActiveDirectory, and keeping employees happily collaborating in the corporate walled-garden LinkedIn without being exposed to all of the external headhunters and snipers, while still allowing some limited cross-corporate interchange where allowed. Plus, now when you're outsourced, your HR can helpfully update your LinkedIn status for you to give you a jumpstart on finding your next opportunity!
Of course, all of the real techies I know ignore the internal social networks and Skype/Lync and have migrated all of their collaboration onto more IRC-esque tools, like Hipchat or Slack, where they can freely discuss and exchange CI and PR notifications and lots of cat gifs using chatbots. But, well, gradually M$ will catch on.
Clearly, people whose primary job output is not open-source code do not deserve new jobs.
LinkedIn has 100 million active users. That's $250 per user. I guess they're going to try to monetize these people heavily.
Imagine if big companies were really state owned. Corporate power wouldn't be the same that way.
Hm, I guess in order for that to be possible, the way I imagined, such a corporation would have be owned by similar corporations, if ownership rely on one corporation having most shares in the business.
Having said that, I suppose any one individual might own the larger parts of a company as well.
image size: 15,308.09 KB (15,675,489 bytes)
dimensions: 5,760px × 3,840px (scaled to 779px × 519px)
Just when did it become socially acceptable to put a 15 MiB 5760x3840 JPEG on anything? This is 164.4 kB at true scaling with 80% quality. Marketing needs some slapping!
Clearly, people whose primary job output is not open-source code do not deserve new jobs.
https://yourlogicalfallacyis.c...
https://www.logicallyfallaciou...
So, you sign up for something other than LinkedIn and don't use Windows anymore. The new site you signed up for has "FREE" Office 365, whether you use it or not.
Guess what happens then. I (& probably you) get a continuous stream of attempts by MS to send data out of my system (MacOS.)
Microsoft is becoming the ISIS of software, invading every single machine it can possibly reach.
From a paid M$ shill. "I am shocked?" Get out of your windows house fanboi. Open sourced programs will not be bought.
If you need and audio program that will stay working (not like musicmatch or Winamp) Get open sourced for free. Then donate if you like it enough and want to.
This is what I have been taught in using 20 yrs of MS bullshit. Go ahead and buy whatever you want MS Open sourced will proliferate. Too bad eh?
This is one of those rare posts that needs to be able to be modded +6.
How this guy got chosen to run MS I'll never understand.
"Is this asset riding secular usage and technology trends?" What?? I wondered if I understood the meaning of the word "secular". I did. It means "denoting attitudes, activities, or other things that have no religious or spiritual basis". I can certainly agree that Microsoft is not religious or spiritual. Satya Nadella wants Microsoft to "ride trends".
Actually, "secular trend" is a recognized technical term in economics and other fields, having nothing to do with religion or lack thereof.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
You gave a link to Secular variation, not the word "secular".
Anyway, I'm guessing that many people would not understand that use of the word "secular". One of the most important requirements of a leader is to be a good communicator. Instead, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella used creepy, scary corporate jargon. "Riding trends"? And, in that case, he used a word in a way that many people would not understand.
"Take Windows 10 or we will email your selfies to your Linkedin contacts."
When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
I figured they would sell out to FaceBook, but why wait until TODAY, the day after the worst US shooting.
If you had a Linked in account, now you are truly micro-shafted.
https://tech.slashdot.org/story/16/06/13/137257/microsoft-is-buying-linkedin-for-262-billion#
"Yes, but, is LinkedIn worth 26 billion?"
26 billion of some things! Like bread crumbs. But not fruit flies; they are too valuable.
It's painful to me when a company self-destructs. Sometimes I react to that by making jokes.
I ultimately cannot see them doing much useful with it.
Everyone posting to this topic is slamming them buying LI as a business product. You are totally missing the point if you think of it as a product. This was a brilliant move by MS and here is why:
There is a hiring war that MS has been fighting with Google, Facebook, Amazon and a few other big companies for the better part of a decade. There is limited top notch tech talent, and whoever can control it has a real edge. MS now owns what is probably the #1 repository for resumes. Think of what this could do to help them hire and retain devs. That is on top of any benefit of getting their foot in the social media game. Also, LI is way more vital to society than FB will ever be. Nobody needs to post pictures of their cat for their friends, but everyone needs a job. I'd bet on LI outlasting FB any day of the week.
Watch MS and see if they follow up on this by trying to buy up Dice.com and or Glassdoor. It will be interesting to see what they do next....
HA! I just wasted some of your bandwidth with a frivolous sig!
Yeah, its perplexing, especially since M$ should have caught on by now. You're observation about LinkedIn vs. f*ckbook is definitely their motivation, it seems to me. I use LinkedIn, slightly, but I disabled my Facebook account long ago, and I was an early adopter. Also, the validity of the identities and corresponding associations with another verifiable human beings seem more reliable on LinkedIn overall. And maybe having a big database of valid data means something to a company full of fake and duplicate Hotmail, msn, live, etc. accounts. I have so many alias identities with M$ because I never trusted them with any of it, especially when I wasn't paying for any of their software unless it was work related, and not on my dime. And maybe there's the rub...work related software; thats the stuff they want to be sure is being paid for, and LinkedIn is a reliable place to baseline some of that info. I dunno, I'm just guessing here, and its a multifaceted decision to be sure, but transactions this obscene obviously have considerations that are way out of my league to fully appreciate in this world of non-disclosure and government tax loopholes. It may take decades before we ever get the truth about mergers like these...
In just 5 years from now LinkedIn will be something of the past. That is the fate of all companies that are acquired by MS.
Good luck with that MS, you don't exactly have a good track record with acquisitions, and this one just doesn't make any sense whatsoever, unless you are admitting you paid 26B for a self reported and highly flawed contact list. And your dreams of developing the next great social networking platform, if google can't do it, what makes you think you can? It's about right place right time, having the right everything...not things anyone would associate with MS
Whenever I use LinkedIn I have the feeling they are kind of sleazy, starting with their spamming of all your contacts. I bet the majority of their "connections" are unwanted connections gained this way. And LinkedIn wants you to pay $30 or $40 a MONTH for their full features. I think Facebook could add a "coworker" type of Friend and a "Facebook Professional" view that just shows coworker links, reproduce what LinkedIn does for FREE, with less annoyance, and quickly drive them out of business. Not that Facebook is not also sleazy, but it's less so, and it could be free
Read as: "...as we seek to [monopolize another aspect of human freedoms]..."
Give us a break! MS doe NOT know what is best for everyone, in spite of MS's efforts to convince you.
Self-importance and self-indulgence is the root of ALL evil.
Why? What use is this purchase? If they really wante to waste that much money, I'll take care if it for them.
If you can't tell the difference between a strawman and a reductio ad absurdum, there's just no helping you.
To promote Entrepreneurs/StartUps
1. Impose tax on corporate revenues, not profits
2. Regulate market capitalization of corporations
Casteism
Not to mention the "type" of data. Sure there are other examples of data buys, but your basic apps and social stuff is going to be a hodgepodge of people. Linkedin, is mostly business professionals of some kind or another.
So, A) the exact market MS is in, and B) folks that have slightly more spending power and decision making ability to be targeted with ads, than your typical 12 year old.
I actually think it is a very astute buy. Linkedin is the established dominant player with little competition, and it fits. Maybe they haven't made any money, but they might make MS money, even if for other divisions, or they will likely integrated it into their various products, like resume templates in Office for a small example, contacts in outlook, etc... plenty of examples of "synergies" (I'll kill myself later)
Anyway I see this as a lot smarter buy that most of the crap MS has spent money on...