Microsoft to acquire LinkedIn for $26B

Great move. IMO this is Microsoft making a play for HR managed services -- look for them to sign a big deal with ADP / BenefitsExpress / buy someone like Zenefits to complement this purchase. The power and value of LinkedIn is as a recruiting platform; and recruiting is a big-money problem that's only getting worse. If they can turn LinkedIn into a benefits management platform, that would be a huge win for Microsoft and likely resonate with employees as well -- while giving Microsoft de-facto ownership of the supply chain for knowledge workers.

Microsoft is a traditional B2B company; they make boring enterprise software and sell it through traditional resellers. As more and more core business functions (like HR managed services) start being sold through these channels, it makes more and more sense for Microsoft to get into it. More importantly, Microsoft already has a sales relationship with nearly every company in the world -- and they can now cram a high-margin talent acquisition / management product down that sales pipe as well.

IMO this is one of those acquisitions that wouldn't have made sense for Apple, Google or Facebook -- their customer base is too consumer-centric. But given Microsoft's heavy enterprise sales base, it absolutely makes sense for them. Nadella has finally gotten Microsoft to realize it's not really competing with Apple, Amazon, Google and Facebook -- its real competition is Oracle, Salesforce and IBM. Viewed through that lens, this is a great purchase.

I'm surprised by the amount of negativity about the deal here on HN. It seems like an excellent match. I could see LinkedIn as an asset for Microsoft anywhere in the realms of work collaboration and HR. No other social network besides LinkedIn comes close to complimenting MicroSoft's wheelhouse of enterprise utility.

Per LinkedIn's Form 8-K [1], LinkedIn has agreed to pay Microsoft a $725 million break-up fee if (a) LinkedIn's Board of Directors withdraws its recommendation of the merger, (b) LinkedIn accepts a superior offer, or (c) LinkedIn's stockholders turn the merger down. Note that LinkedIn may terminate the merger without paying the break-up fee if it avoids announcing an acquisition within one year of so terminating [2].

[1] https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1271024/000110465916...

[2] https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1271024/000110465916...

This is a fantastic move for Microsoft, and IMO, a premature throwing-in-the-towel moment for LinkedIn. At $26B, that's less than 10% of Facebook's market-cap. That's a steal for the world's biggest Social-Professional Network, and the medium through which most recruiting could conceivably happen in the future. Given that MS currently has no social presence at all, but has a fantastic enterprise sales channel, LinkedIn is a great asset for them.

The idea of going to physical career fairs in thousands of colleges around the country, and collecting/handing out paper resumes just to make the connections happen, always seemed like a woefully inefficient way of connecting job seekers with employers. In the future, this process is going to become more and more digital, and networks like LinkedIn are going to become vital hubs in this new wave. If Microsoft can find a way to accelerate and monetize this trend, this acquisition could well be one of the best deals of the decade.

Skype, Nokia, Minecraft, LinkedIn. Also Yahoo, almost, at one point.

Best of luck to Microsoft with its latest acquisition. It doesn't look that sensible though.

The biggest thing hampering LinkedIn's growth has been such a strong tech market. This is also why many HN readers are not familiar with it. When the market is strong, those with technology skills can find work in a few hours without using any platform.

But if the market dips, things like LinkedIn's recommendations will become useful and relevant. Less so for technology workers than for those with softer skills, but far more relevant than they are today.

LinkedIn is pretty big in the NYC startup scene because overall people are more ambitious in a career ambition way... Silicon Valley has more ambition to build cool things and so having a LinkedIn profile feels like wearing a suit and having one's teeth professionally whitened and going around formally shaking hands with people.

LinkedIn is also one of the few innovators in dark pattern UI research. Each week I get an invitation email accidentally sent by someone over 60 who signed up for LinkedIn and spammed his/her entire Gmail address book with invites.

I hope the acquisition isn't being driven by LinkedIn's lead-gen functionality, since that has been the main reason I've considered deleting my profile. Most of the people who attempt to connect are selling something, which reduces the platform's usefulness as a social network.

The best thing about the acquisition is that lots of that money will flow back into the startup ecosystem.

Congrats to anyone who was holding LinkedIn stock. Microsoft's bid of $196 per share has LNKD up $63 bucks a share or 48% in premarket.

Edit: Also a cautionary tale for anyone shorting a stock that fundamentally sucks but could be a buyout target. Use options instead!

$26 Billion is actually fair : The question is, would it provide earnings of $2.6 Billion per year discounted over the next ten years?

I think so.

Keep in mind, MS sells $90 billion of product and services a year, so we're talking less than 3% of that. (MS cost of revenue is about a third of revenues!)

1] First imagine LinkedIn used as the primary sales channel for MS products. Head of sales is probably salivating.

2] And then there is advertising. I think part of the reason LinkedIn is valuable is this: apart from LinkedIn there is no simple way (barring credit cards or other documents) to verify if an account who signs up to an online service is a real person, or who they claim to be. For an advertising business, this is gold: Expect the LinkedIn federated sign on to be integrated into many microsoft services (and by more third party services.)

Strategically if you are selling software/anything, you have are better off targeting the top 10% of earners rather than a gazillion broke teenagers.

Of course there are fake profiles on LinkedIn, but they are minor, and weeding them out is probably easier than on other platforms.

MS : "If you don't upgrade to Windows 10, we'll create a linkedin profile for you."

I wish people would read company's quarterly performance reports before making claims about whether we're in a bubble and whether company x is worth y. LinkedIn generates a ton of revenue and is very arguably worth its valuation. Just because you don't use LinkedIn or SnapChat or whatever else has a ridiculous valuation these days doesn't mean its valuation is not justified in some way.

I hope this will usher in an era of less unethical behaviour from the company under new leadership. Congratulations to shareholders.

Anyone know why they'd negotiate an all cash settlement?

"LinkedIn will retain its distinct brand, culture and independence" -- well that's a shame..

What a terrible time to be burning that much cash, just before the next recession, and on a resume site. I was starting to see some good things coming from Microsoft but this makes me shake my head and question leadership big time.

This makes a ton of sense for everyone. LinkedIn is too small to be a dominant platform like Google or Facebook. If someone were to buy it, it would be someone with a strong enterprise presence, with an incomplete social footprint. It would also need to be a company with a high enough market cap to afford the purchase, and PE ratio for it to appear dilutive.

Who fits the profile?

- IBM - They are in share buyback mode, not major purchases

- Oracle - Social may not matter to them

- SAP - Too many issues from prior acquisitions

- HP - Splitting, but building

Microsoft is the ideal buyer.

The key is integration. Microsoft doesn't have a great history for integration, but that was also under the prior regime.

My take on this:

- Better integration of Dynamics CRM with LinkedIn - A move towards social selling with LinkedIn Sales Navigator - Enriched LinkedIn news-feed with updates from work life (example: meetings, projects) - Better Cortana (personal assistant) that can help you professionally - Integration of Office suite with LinkedIn learning - Usage of Bing for professional search

Here's looking forward to my Hotmail account email address being accidentally 'shared' with LinkedIn and the never-ending LinkedIn spam returning.

What's interesting about this deal is what didn't happen 1. Google who is right next door and wants to make a dent in Cloud didn't go after them 2. LinkedIn who is a monopoly in this category- decided to give up trying to go its own- seems like they knew they topped out

A huge database which can be utilized for sales. Who to talk to with what profile, which kind of approach is likely to work, and so forth. A great opportunity for some data mining folks!

LinkedIn has a huge presence in the professional users and businesses. A large number of people from non-tech backgrounds never got onto LinkedIn because they never kew of it or didn't really bother to create a profile here.

Imagine integrating LinkedIn profiles with Microsoft's professional tools or even Windows. The reach of LinkedIn will be massive if Microsoft gives it a push through Windows.

It's likely that this boost does not necessarily convert into increasing revenue, but it can certainly boost the number of active users that LinkedIn has.

And I hope, now that it is acquired, LinkedIn will stop pushing us to spam all of our contacts about joining it, updating profiles or whatever.

" Will continue to operate independently ".

Why do they even say that. Microsoft didn't pay 20billion for a passive investment.

Such a silly thing to say.

LinkedIn owns Lynda, but Microsoft (MSDN) partnered with Pluralsight, interesting how that will play out.

Holy fuck that is a lot of money. How on earth is LinkedIn worth anywhere near that?!

Noob question: how can Microsoft buy LinkedIn given that large parts of it are owned buy random investors who might not want to sell?

What happens to someone who, lets say, bought $10k worth of LinkedIn stock two years ago and has no intention to sell. Will that person be forced to sell his stock?

I had been thinking recently about deleting my LinkedIn account. The question has just been settled.

This could be totally unrelated, but damn this is a pretty stupid bad signal.

LinkedIn's iOS Developer Community cancels WWDC watch party after Microsoft purchase: http://appleinsider.com/articles/16/06/13/linkedins-ios-deve...

I'm genuinely curious as to what makes LinkedIn worth that much. On the surface it just looks like Microsoft is trying to commit suicide.

As as aside, how many startups in Silicon Valley are rushing to up their spam game in the wake of this? :)

It'll be interesting to see how they integrate LinkedIn with Yammer (if they do at all). Particularly with the launch of Facebook at Work recently too.

just my own prediction.. msft will attempt to replatform the entire stack onto Azure, making heavy use of their Azure platform services as a way to show how scalable they are (sort of the same play they made with hotmail decades ago).

How does it work when a public company acquires another public company? If you have existing LinkedIn shares, do they get converted to Microsoft shares?... or do they just disappear one day, and a pile of cash takes its place?

Can someone explain how Microsoft bought a publicly traded company? Shareholders own Linked in, so did they buy a controlling interest and or is there currently a tender offer circulating for all holders of the common stock?

Also curious that MS is valuing it Linked stock at $196 dollars a share when before the weekend it was trading at $133. Did they believe it was undervalued by almost 50% then? That seems dubious.

To put things in perspective, WhatsApp was bought in October, 2014 for $22 billion.

I believe it will be great for whole industry, because microsoft money pushed Likedin to more user and developer friendly environment (Yes, I suppose they will open API again aka twitter). Better API will bring more business tools integration, so it increases role of Linkedin, as result it will push the whole social media market to a new level, instead current stagnation.

I think Salesforce is about to get much stronger competition from Microsoft's Dynamics CRM. If they connect Dynamics CRM with LinkedIn's massive database of orgs and professionals--a treasure trove for marketing and sales teams--and embargoes other CRM software from that data[0], I can see them taking market share from Salesforce.

[0] LinkedIn did exactly this when it acquired Rapportive—another popular sales tool. They let Rapportive continue accessing LinkedIn data but blocked competitors from doing so.

PS - They mention that, as a result of this acquisition, Office 365 users might be able to invite other professionals to collaborate on their documents or projects. It's interesting that they chose such a weak example, when it's clear there are much greater benefits they'll be able to offer. One I already mentioned, and many more are mentioned in this thread. Probably trying to keep competitors guessing?

The comments here are hilarious, they really reveal the IT bubble.

The only real complaint about this purchase would be that LinkedIn was overvalued. And I wouldn't bet on that since Microsoft surely sent a big team of their brightest cookies to make a valuation of the company.

But other than that, LinkedIn fits: it is a corporate social network, if you will. I know that "corporate social network" is almost an oxymoron, but bear with me. It is social in the sense that users register and interact with each other just as on a regular social network, but ultimately the service is corporate focused. LinkedIn has created one of the biggest and best maintained databases of employment information (and of possible business contacts) in the world. As TheArcane said, LinkedIn is "Facebook + Monster on steroids".

If you don't believe me, try to speak to people you know, active professionals outside of the IT sector and see how many of them have LinkedIn profiles. Better yet, talk to people who are not in employer-dominated sectors (i.e. not like IT, where the demand for qualified workers greatly exceeds the supply).

LNKD is extremely powerful when paired with CRM. To the point that MSFT might have seen this as a better choice than buying Salesforce, especially as their own in house CRM offering (Dynamics) is becoming very strong, and far more likeable for end users.

The biggest loser from this deal was Salesforce, they will be gutted.

This move took me completely by surprise, and I'm pretty impressed in Nadella for pulling it off. Although LNKD is a pretty ordinary proposition (financially - and what else really matters nowadays) by itself, 1 + 1 can equal 3 if it is linked tightly with Microsoft's productivity products such as Skype for Business, Outlook, CRM etc. And MSFT took advantage of LNKDs poor recent performance to buy them "cheap" while making their management look like hero's when the market was beginning to think they were anything but.

Wonder how many people will use this as an opportunity to either create a linkedin profile or to delete the one they already have. Change-of-control risks on a deal like this are substantial.

This is also an excellent reminder that you never know where the profiles you create will end up.

Genuine question... what do MS stand to gain from this?

Seems grossly over priced on a per active user basis: ________

26.2 billion / (425 million*25% active) =

$247 per active user

Somewhat more info in the press release:

http://news.microsoft.com/2016/06/13/microsoft-to-acquire-li...

Perhaps LinkedIn will use fewer evil antipatterns now that its ownership has something resembling a reputation to uphold.

I bought linkedin a couple of months ago at like 108 or so... I'm debating whether or not to sell half or all my stock... needless to say the wife is thrilled that I finally did some investing right :)

Most Important Question : Do LinkedIn employees stop getting free food or Microsoft employees get free food now?

I'm not sure what Microsoft is getting with LinkedIn for $26bn.

I know it is a little crazy, but I think they would have been better off buying Redhat for $15bn or Canonical (Ubuntu linux) for even cheaper.

That's quite the pay day for Reid Hoffman. 14.5m shares at $196 = $2.8bn. All cash deal. Ching ching!!

Two shitty companies merge. I can only imagine what Microsoft has planned for LinkedIn. Hopefully this is one of those acquisitions where they purchase it and shut it down months later.

Are the guys in the picture at the top photoshopped on another pic?

The internet is becomming more and more like real world businesses.

We're going to be left with four or so big companies. Facebook, Google, Microsoft.

Yahoo Twitter e.t.c will be swallowed up next.

Here's hoping Microsoft keeps up it's recent good guy persona, and starts actively identifying and removing dark patterns from LinkedIn.

The only explanation I can come up with is an aquihire of dark ui-pattern experts from LinkdIn to better trick users into installing Windows 10.

An angle I haven't seen anyone mention:

They now own Lynda.com, one of the strongest software and general education entities out there. This gives them not only a channel for promoting their own software (or providing some really comprehensive integrated help/training), but an insight into what kinds of software and other training people are putting time into.

We updated the link from http://blogs.microsoft.com/firehose/2016/06/13/microsoft-to-..., which points to this.

IMO, Microsoft has the means and resources to sift thru linkedIn metadata to gain an hiring advantage over their competitors. In addition they could probably infer what other companies are doing thru their hiring and searches. There is no other platform like this with this scale another monopoly; human resources.

Interesting to see the obvious pro-microsoft bias in comments here. I can only imagine the worst from microsoft and their user-hostile behaviour.

* trojan-like telemetry impossible to control or block

* malware-like behaviour through "legitimate" software update channels, force-feeding windows 10 on unwilling customers

* embrace-extend-extinguish, mission accomplished by destroying Nokia's smart phone business

* their recent shenanigans with skype, and how they killed Linux support

* their abysmal, hard-to-use new directions in UI design (flat, 2D, no contrast, paper-like, or even metro for that matter)

I can already think of three to four nasty ways they can leverage (abuse) all the LinkedIn user information, work history, contacts, and networks, and I'm sure they will do it based on their recent user-antagonistic behaviour.

Oh, but they've nicely polished up their PR machinery so everything's cool now.

At least Microsoft will be able to tout the inability to delete a LinkedIn profile as a feature and not a bug.

I've read many complaints about how linkedin is a tool that has so much potential if it was just done right... and no one here is entertaining the possibility that MS is thinking the same way? I know MS has a bad track record for acquisitions but I think this one has a lot of potential.

"Think: everyone who graduates from college and looks for a job will now have a Microsoft account."

https://twitter.com/saschasegan/status/742342770891862016

I know bandwidth is cheap these days but including a 14.9mb cover image on such a major story....?

I for one welcome our new Windows overlords!

Let's hope they pull another Nokia with this, er, beloved company.

If I use Skype acquisition as a guide we can expect advertisements all over the site very soon.

LinkedIn closed public trading on Friday at ~131 per share. This deal represents a $196 per share price - so anyone that purchased on Friday is looking at ~50% ROI.

Is this the best non-Facebook ROI for a social network that's been available to the public markets?

Headline should have been "Microsoft adds LinkedIn to their professional network"

I am currently a grad student at a top5 university in US and been at a top5 in India. I can say from experience that LinkedIn is dying and no longer valued as professional profile. LinkedIn had a nice concept of connection, however after a few accept alls I have 500+ connections with a similar amount pending. The messages I receive are garbage, the feed is stale. There is no incentive to open the website and I have unsubscribed from all their marketing email as they are ~ spam. Maybe this is just me but I feel WhatsApp is way more popular /useful/growing and Microsoft paid more than that for a dying network.

On their press release[1] presentation[2] they have shown this as Microsoft's Graph - http://imgur.com/elacuzH. How and Why is the question.

[1]-https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/Investor [2]-https://c.s-microsoft.com/en-us/CMSFiles/InvestorPresentatio...

Do many people use Yammer? The company that I'm with tried it a few years back and it just wasn't useful for us. I wonder if they will end up merging Yammer, or at least some Yammer features, into LinkedIn at some point.

Stock price movements after one day: MSFT down ~ $12bn, LNKD up ~ $9bn.

Looks like they overpaid a bit.

I wonder what the future holds for Lynda.com which was just recently purchased by LinkedIn. I've been a member for years and was already concerned over the LI acquisition. Hopefully, they are not lost in the shuffle.

Oh wow. This purchase does not make any sense. What benefit does LinkedIn bring to Microsoft?

Wouldn't surprise me another competitor will emerge and replace LinkedIn. It's time anyway with their annoying spamming of late.

I was already very upset with the direction Windows 10 was taking in term of privacy. Now Microsoft wants to be big in social network. I hate to say that but it is really time to ditch Windows.

Plusses: LinkedIn is distinctive among social networks. That's one reason Facebook hasn't killed LinkedIn, yet. Though I increasingly find my business contacts interact with me on Facebook rather than LinkedIn. A bigger plus may be that a business-oriented social network is strategically coherent for Microsoft.

Minuses: LinkedIn is relatively small. It's not that well-implemented. It has an oddball business model. It has no messaging component, and that's where social networking is going.

I think it's telling of the times, my increased opinion of Microsoft, and my horrible impression of LinkedIn, that I expect this to result in better LinkedIn behavior than previously. Microsoft still has its own problems, but in my opinion they are far better than the skeezy feeling I get from LinkedIn's marketing and promotion to "linked" email accounts (that is, addresses they've associated to you and send notices that people are trying to contact you on).

This kinda makes sense from an enterprise social network perspective. This could tie really well and augment their messaging products (Skype for Business (was Lync)). Most professionals may not have Skype or may not wish to expose their Skype ids but maybe ok with LinkedIn as that has always been their professional front. So basically every LinkedIn account has Skype integration. I can see the marketing angle from a group meeting, and eventually collaboration perspective.

Another account which will be forcibly connected with ms credentials. Opportunity to collect another sensitive information in an effort to create "better UX".

I hope this does not end up being a Yammer 2.0.

I also don't see other companies advertising jobs on the platform owned my a big tech giant whose sole purpose isn't that. I don't think they will make more money in the "recruiting" side.

This deal sounds like a 50% premium but that just brings it back to what it was 6 months ago, lesser than the peak price. Sounds more like LinkedIn just gave up.

Only positive thing I see is, that MS can bundle HR software with Office 365.

LinkedIn is becoming this internet monster.

Where is the ethic alternative that is for everybody? (e.g.: AngelList is only for tech startups stuff and not for waiter kind of stuff).

I hope LinkedIn is shut now forever now, with all the spam.

In addition to what others have said (what does it get Microsoft, etc.), how would this even be allowed? It would mean most recruiters going through Microsoft to get to candidates. I can just imagine how well that would go over at other tech companies: how can they be sure Microsoft isn’t getting “first crack” at people, etc. and does Microsoft then know which companies are about to lose employees?

Sounds like an awful lot of money. Must be cheaper ways to make the money LinkedIn is supposed to make them.

And MS has a pretty bad history with these big acquisitions. MS Kin failed. Skype is not what it used to be. People seemed to start leaving it after MS bought it and made it worse. Nokia was a big disaster.

Shouldn't they have learned by now? I pretty sure MS is not going to make back the money spent on LinkedIn.

Prediction: LinkedIn will integrate with office 365, and you will be forced into a LinkedIn for Business account when you use Office 365. You can choose to make your information public, private or a combination of both (hopefully).

This will be marketed as a single place to keep up-to-date resumes, towards both job seekers and corporate HR people who want better insight into their own workforce.

Why would Microsoft release a major M&A announcement at 8:35 AM EST / 5:35 AM PST? It's not even the professional workday yet!

For reference, IPO in May 2011 was for $45/share, and they closed at $94.25 on the first day for a total market cap of $9bn, according to this [1] source.

[1] http://money.cnn.com/2011/05/19/technology/linkedin_IPO/

Add that one to the list: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mergers_and_acquisitio...

Looking trough the list this is probably the biggest acquisition for Microsoft (in monetary value). All-cash transaction nonetheless.

so in the end, a recruiting problem is solved bya software company, now could be named as the big L. wondering what happened to all those people who studied Human Resource as a management branch and what are they doing now when whole recruiting thing is being run by bunch of sw engineers sitting in silicon valley and crunching big data.

I predict the next version of AD/Outlook will allow for direct integration between a company's workforce information and said workforce's public profile. Why bother with scraping your user's contact list when you can feed directly from the source system that already includes their name, email address, and job title.

Was this Microsoft's elaborate $26bn marketing plan to get the media to look away from Apple's WWDC announcements?

This is huge.

As an ex-Microsoft, I really don't understand that move. It doesn't make any sense. If the goal is to compete with the like of Facebook, I don't think it'll work as Linkedin is a business network. It makes me want to sell my stocks (-3.63% pre-market).

If I were MS I would have bought slack to replace both Sharepoint and Yammer.

Shoot! I was planning to buy the stock soon. Say what you will about the crappiness of the product and the dark patterns, but it was a great stock to buy and probably the only social network with a diverse split in revenues (excluding Facebook - they use acquisitions to diversify revenue but nothing has been monitized yet)

From MSFT perspective -- good move. From LinkedIn perspective, good move as well -- they have great backing and got a great deal ($). As a user, I'm sad to see this -- the end of LinkedIn as we know it. I've no interest in MSFT holding my personal info online CV presence. Perhaps time to move to someplace else.

I mostly avoid LinkedIn, then they acquired Lynda.com and began integrating into (and basically degrading the experience of) a platform I had enjoyed for many years.

My only concern is what this means for Lynda.com, it would be great if it could return to its pre-LinkedIn state, but I have a feeling it will somehow only get worse.

Too much money. Wayyyy too much.

And if this goes the way of most other very large MS acquisitions, it'll be utterly wasted.

I personally don't like LinkedIn itself but I recognise that it fills an huge market need. Probably that's why LinkedIn survived to so many bad decisions and was able to retain users.

Once Microsoft is walking the enterprise path, the acquisition looks like a logical investment. (logical != profitable)

196/share is roughly what LNKD was trading at before their very bad earnings report in February. FWIW.

Microsoft just spent 5% of their market cap buying Linkedin.

Does anybody think linkedin is worth one twentieth of Microsoft?

I don't.

I foresee a synergistic relationship between the companies. Microsoft is reorganizing to focus on business cloud solutions, built upon a subscription-based model. The online Office365 suite is the future. Acquiring LinkedIn will allow for targeting IT professionals.

That said, I hate LinkedIn.

ALL CASH. Holy fuck.

I just can't imagine 26 billion dollars. That's beyond any human's comprehension.

Link to the press release: http://news.microsoft.com/2016/06/13/microsoft-to-acquire-li...

A social network is only as good as the recency of its data. They could integrate with Bing to show "people you know", and with other tools, it if people stop updating their profiles, it would be an expensive building acquisition.

Congratulations to AngelList!

What does this mean for the startup/VC market in the shirt term?

Confidence trending upwards again?

Smart for Microsoft and LinkedIn. Yet also means I expect LinkedIn to become even more distasteful to me, increasing the chance I abandon it. I also see no paradox with these two opposing observations. :-)

Regardless of how you feel, I think it's pretty amazing that even Microsoft with its vast resources doesn't feel they could compete with LinkedIn if they invested that same 26B in themselves.

The fact is, Microsoft needed a content ecosystem. Buying LinkedIn gives it a lot of content AND a huge stake in the recruitment game which is a huge and growing market. The deal makes sense.

The last gasp. Just like Yahoo with tumblr. When a corporate behemoth has a dream of transformation, they rather just buy that dream than to actually undergo transformation themselves.

LinkedIn + Skype + Yammer gives MS the best inter-business or B2B directory/identity/contact-ibility.

Extremely valuable for a company competing for inter-business collaboration.

Depending how used, of course.

I wonder what they do with the online training provider lynda which is owned by linkedin? They could use that to push free training for Azure to increase the reach of its services??

I don't think anybody's going to like this but Microsoft.

It seems like a good fit. I getting these .NET developer recruiters with their "perfect match messages" even though I don't have .NET in my skillset...

Time to delete my LinkedIn account, or otherwise corrupt its contents before MS swallows it all. Microsoft doesn't have the right to my intellectual property.

Microsoft exec #1: "It seems that people are hating us less and less these days. Somehow, the quality of our products and services is perceived as higher and less hostile to users. That's a problem!"

Microsoft exec #2: "How about we acquire one of the most hated brands out there? One that makes tech people grind their teeth when it's even mentioned. How about LinkedIn? That should tarnish our image up till it's right back where it used to be."

Microsoft exec #1: "There could be a vice-presidency in it for me if I can make that work! Great idea!"

Somehow feel that MS - Slack acquisition is coming soon

I hope they do a rewrite/redesign of the frontend.

Not that LinkedIn was stellar in any regard around user privacy, but is the situation expected to materially degrade under Microsoft?

Another nokia.....

> To be honest, they're probably buying the users, not the product.

What is the value of those users? I'd argue they're basically worthless, and that this is a disastrously bad acquisition.

Let me propose some concrete measures: How often is the service's single sign-on login button used in your app? What is the value of the users in your app sourced from this service? I'd argue this is a great comparison, because if you can't monetize LinkedIn's users by sourcing them from LinkedIn traditionally (via ads, clever sourcing hacks, sign in buttons, etc.), you're certainly not going to monetize them effectively by owning the whole platform.

Where it is available, Facebook can be something like 10% of a free-to-play mobile game's logins. Facebook ads may be the source for as many as 20% of your users. Facebook login and Facebook sourced users often have long term value twice as high as everyone else.

Facebook is very valuable, and it's what made Zynga, Supercell, IAC (Tinder, Match.com) rich. Spotify might see something as high as 20% logins, and the diminished amount of account sharing alone must make them a few million dollars extra. Theoretically, if Facebook had not censored game post spam on its network, Zynga would still be a huge, rich company. If only Zynga could have bought Facebook instead of all those little gaming companies...

By comparison, LinkedIn retired their single sign in button. When it was available, it may have represented less than 1% of logins on a business service website and app. LinkedIn-sourced users had no different LTV, and represented less than 2% of all users.

LinkedIn was probably overvalued before Microsoft bought it, radically so. LinkedIn had no way of legitimately realizing the 20% fees recruiters enjoy—and even if they did, those fees exist exclusively in the tech world, exclusively for a narrow part of the workforce, with no credible path to introducing those fees to the rest of employment recruiting. Considering LinkedIn's poor track record overall of the value of those users, what is Microsoft going to do with them instead?

A bunch of companies try this path and fail. For example, GoDaddy is trying the same thing: Buy companies (you've never heard of) to try to cross-sell between GoDaddy users and company users. They make acquisitions based on incorrectly extrapolated LTVs for like 100 accounts they intensively hand cross-sold pre-acquisition. Then GoDaddy discovers two things a year later: the actual LTV of their test cohort, which is wildly below their estimate, and the actual value of the remaining 99,900 of their acquired users, which is nothing. Even if you bought a zero-revenue startup for $100,000 and your cost per acquired user (CPA) is $1.00, your LTV is still near $0, so what did you earn?

I suspect this purchase isn't about users. I suspect major LinkedIn investors shopped around the company and financial-engineered a sophisticated kickback for the decision makers on the acquirer's end. Much like when Google purchased the Google Ventures-backed Nest and enriched a huge number of insiders at great shareholder expense, the acquisition team at Microsoft was probably duped into enriching a great deal of insiders too.

Considering that MS also owns Skype, could we see them combining those two technologies into some kind of interview platform?

Last time I was so perplexed with a valuation was back in 2007/2008 when BlackBerry was trading at over $100 per share.

I think the important question is why did linkedIn want to sell itself .. they were not in as much trouble as Twitter.

$26.2bn for a list of recruitment agencies. They could have bought the same data on the dark web for much cheaper...

What is Microsoft hoping to gain from this?

When they write off the 26 billion in a few years the tax payer will be paying 40% of the purchase price.

Ouch. Reid Hoffman's 11 percent stake in LinkedIn is going to result in a $1 billion tax bill.

What a surprise this is to hear! I didn't know LinkedIn was in the market to be acquired.

Does anyone know why they are paying a 50% premium to closing price? That seems massive.

Current market share price is of 132$ then why did Microsoft pay 90$ high? Any reason?

If Microsoft buys LinkedIn, I wonder if Facebook will now try to enter that territory.

Linkedin is a great buy for Microsoft! Congratulations to my Linkedin friends. :)

From now, when you logout of LinkedIn, you will be redirected to msn.com :P

I'd like to see this valuation - this transaction looks shaky at best.

Something something private information changing hands in buyouts...

A leas they will fix the LinkedIN UI, that thing was psiing me off!!

Found the best summary of today's events so far... [0]

"SEATTLE — In a last-ditch attempt to connect with consumers, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella announced on Monday that he had purchased LinkedIn for $26.2 billion in an all-cash deal. Founded in 2003, the social networking giant — which boasts more than 443 million professionals — makes it possible for users to “connect” with people they don’t like enough to add on Facebook. 443 million of those “connections” were made early Monday morning, as Microsoft’s Nadella attempted to fulfill a lifelong dream of having more internet friends than MySpace Tom. The deal, which had been in the works for months, came together only days after Microsoft placed a set of similar bids for Yahoo, Neopets, and Geocities in an effort to buy up the rest of 2005’s hottest web properties. At $26.2B for 443M friends, Microsoft has answered a long-held question about the true cost of friendship: the answer? $59.14 USD."

[0] https://medium.com/@draftedapp/microsoft-ceo-finds-26-2b-und...

I feel like I should cancel my LinkedIn account now. Hrm..

Too pricey. They could buy more spambots with less $$.

I hope they don't do what they did for Nokia.

Good idea to buy LinkedIn, but for $26 BILLION!

Isn't that a million times earnings? Way, way over valued. You could hire a team and ad agency to make a better LinkedIn for $10 million...

Bye bye LinkedIn!

Is Jeff Weiner photoshopped onto the pic?

Why buy? Why didn't MS invest?

Every user gets .net endorsements

What does that mean to Scala?

Why? Linkedin is kinda awful.

> LinkedIn will retain its distinct brand, culture and independence.

Darnit, I thought there was hope for a second.

wow, nice exit for LinkedIn. Microsoft now also owns Lynda.com .

One word: Clippy

its not worth 26 million lol

Two turkeys don't make an eagle

PIF Reid Hoffman (Paid in FULL) ;-)

very interesting news to say at least.

impressive

Satya Nadella has made a bold final attempt to stop LinkedIn from spamming him

"Your career doesn't seem to respond anymore. Do you want to restart it now?"

Between Windows constantly pestering and even trying to trick me to upgrade to Windows 10 and getting LinkedIn requests from people I've only ever met once this is truly a match made in hell.

I have a friend request hanging there for the last couple of years and I can't accept it or reject it :) Maybe Microsoft will fix it...

Awesome.... Sounds pretty interesting, Microsoft aacquired LinkedIn for $26B... Wao!!! Heavy amount.... Microsoft is progressing fine. Hope it would not be just like Nokia.

Someone else must've been interested. Salesforce, maybe?

Oh, I can just imagine how the process went at MS:

* Exec A: Social things are Good (coming to the conclusion about 10 years too late)

* Exec B: Shall we create our own Google+?

* Exec C: No, that didn't turn out that well for Google. Let's buy something existing.

* Exec B: Ok, I've Googled a list of top 10 social networking sites for sale, and ordered them by list price, but really we'll need to come up with a strategy first to make a good choice...

* Exec A: Booooring. Let's just buy the cheapest one and be done with it. What's the worst which could happen? Gimme a bonus.

To be honest, they're probably buying the users, not the product.

Continuing my theory that Nadella doesn't know what he's doing. I don't think Microsoft learned anything from buying Yammer.

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Does this mean clippy is going to start offering me jobs?

I'm reading many disparaging comments about this, but I bet if it were facebook or some other popular company favored by this group that made this purchase the comments would have a different tone.

MySpace 2.0

good. disliked LinkedIn anyway

Ok, Linkedin is definitely dead :p

Sounds like Microsoft is going the Yahoo route.

Well, there goes that neighbourhood.

I think this will be a new source of memes.

New headline... "Bloated, behind the times corporate buys bloated, barely functioning social network."

What a waste. What a waste. What a waste.

how many of you use Microsoft OR Linkedin ? Upvote if result is: NO

LinkedIn is a static and largely useless platform. I have been on it for many years, there has been no innovation, and I can fully understand why its share price has taken a beating. Microsoft are desperate and deluded. Who would want to own Microsoft shares - this company is finished, surely. If this doesn't indicate a bubble in tech, I don't know what does.

Of course HN is mocking the deal like we know better without any form of analysis of the situation.

I circulated this to some of my friends and one came back thus:

So now, LinkedIn will turn SinkedIn !!

I'd like to add you to my professional network on LinkedIn

https://twitter.com/iamdevloper/status/714390085647511552

Coming to an inbox near you: “I'd like to add you to my professional network on Bing+”

https://twitter.com/iamdevloper/status/742391687801147394

Anyone just get this message?

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