Slashdot Mirror
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.
The problem is the price...$26 billion all cash deal!!!
If i were dabbling in stocks i would short MSFT immediately. This is stupider than their NOKIA acquisition. Most of these companies are run by mediocre people with no imagination and too much money.
Tat Tvam Asi
Those whopping numbers show one thing: how desperate capitalism is.
Years and years of simulating exponential growth outpace any real growth (which can't possibly be exponential in a real world).
Watch those inflated piles of cash, which are mostly virtual desperately seeking "investment opportunities" which are even more virtual.
26 * 10^9 dollars. This is 3.5 fucking dollars per human being out there. There's no so much money.
Really curious what's gonna happen when this house of cards breaks down.
LinkedIn is a frigging joke. Maybe the intial idea was okay, but then they let any random idiot "endorse" you for skills. When I started seeing my connections endorsing me for skills they did not know I possessed I realized that I could no longer trust any endorsements for people I did not know.
Now I just use LinkedIn to see what people look like, nothing else.
If Slashdot were chemistry it would look like this:Cadaverine
MS must just have cash to burn. This is one of the stupidest acquisitions I have ever heard of. Best I can tell, LinkedIn, serves most people as nothing more than a centrally-maintained contact list so they can find somewhat current contact info for former coworkers. Where is the revenue stream in that?
Has LinkedIn *ever* turned a profit?
Microsoft is rapidly devolving into the most clueless tech firm out there...
> Less creepy? Try windows 10.
Just try DECLINING Windows 10. What MS does then is creepy.
Okay, so the Windows 10 telemetry is creepy too.
"Whatever M$ 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.
Not just that, but how much more evidence do we need that *all* of these properties have limited lifespans.
I look forward to the MySpacing of LinkedIn.
------ The best brain training is now totally free : )
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.
what's the purpose behind buying LinkedIn?
MS is in a horsewhip business (Desktop OS and Office) and are trying to preserve the company. What else could they do but thrash?
Enterprise tech is losing market cap. Console gaming never became profitable. Smartphone and search failed to gain any traction. They will keep doing these random acquisitions until something works or they run out of capital. Kind of like IBM.
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.
If you want to get into the "You are the product" social networking business of selling people's data or mining it for your own marketing purposes, then MSFT buying out LinkedIn makes perfect sense.
They've also completely failed at mobile, and this may represent a way for them to still tap the data that lives mobile.
LinkedIn is a lot more than a contact list!
For starters, it is becoming the best hiring tool on the planet. It's already strong, with 6.5 million job listings, and 94% of recruiters use the site. (source). But it is inherently superior to its competitors because recruiters can compare candidates claimed experiences with their professional social network.
LinkedIn will beat Monster in recruiting for the same reason that Facebook beat MySpace. Even though MySpace, at one point, had more registered users than Facebook, the lack of stricter identity control (i.e. a REAL, non-spammy userbase) led Facebook to win in the long run.
It works like this, a recruiter wants access to the HR or C level exec at a company. So, the recruiter sends out a contact request to the 300 employees of that company hoping that a few will accept. And of the Few that accept, there's a decent chance they have connections to real targets in the co.
I have applied for and accepted, as well as been recruited for and accepted, jobs which I found through LinkedIn.
That being said, the constant tidal wave of messages and requests to connect from headhunters when I am not in the job market is the reason why I never sign in to LinkedIn unless I am in the job market.
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.
I ultimately cannot see them doing much useful with it..
Who says that Microsoft wants to do anything with all that data . . . ? Maybe, just maybe, Microsoft is passing all this data on to some folks who CAN do something with all this data . . .
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
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.
Combine it with Win10 telemetry and you have a huge datamining business with a really strong grip on a huge swath of the developed world's business data.
I'd actually be kind of surprised if at some point there wasn't a national security conversation on the risks of this much power and information in the hands of one company.