118. The Microsoft Acquisition

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.
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• An opportunity to increase sales of Office 365 via extensive integration with LinkedIn’s functionality.
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• Dynamics (Their CRM solution) will benefit the most from this acquisition and potentially allow it to become the market leader (currently Salesforce).
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• Content from LinkedIn publishing allowing greater advertising opportunities.
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• Big data. Rich information about people and their online behaviour.

Advantages for LinkedIn

• $26 billion!
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• Greater resources to enable new products such as Profinder to be launched and rapidly expanded.
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• $26 billion!
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• Use of Microsoft’s massive cloud infrastructure.
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• A way out of their stock-based compensation conundrum.
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• $2.3 billion into Reid Hoffman’s bank account!

Advantages for Members

• I expect the under-resourced help centre to improve significantly
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• Skype integration
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• Integration with Outlook 365 & Dynamics.
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• Better distribution of published posts

Disadvantages for Members

• Less Google optimisation
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• Another secretive ‘closed’ culture
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• Focus on corporates at the expense of SMB’s
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• And …..

Mentioned in this episode:

This show was created by the original host of the show, Mark Williams.