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Is it worth it?

LinkedIn is another of those Web 2.0 sites that has never made a profit.

I've been on it for a few years. I don't use it much because I don't like it. It isn't even very good for job ads any more.

Still, it's good news for the founding members who instantly become hyper rich!

As far as I know, LinkedIn is still one of the most used social networks among businesses and contractors. That's it has never turned a profit may not be relevant to MS' considerations.

Remember that Microsoft no longer plans to develop the Xbox independent of its PC platforms, and the last three iterations of the Windows operating system have stressed more and more integration of multiple features into a single platform. Integration has become the name of their game.

Presumably, Microsoft could integrate the platform into their own network, saving themselves the trouble of having to build a new network from scratch. It actually makes a lot of sense. LinkedIn is marketed as a form of professional social networking, and Microsoft is the #1 supplier of operating systems to businesses, and services most professionals who are working with employer provided computers. Including LinkedIn as a built in service platform becomes a selling point. They can simply link LinkedIn accounts to existing Microsoft accounts, like they did with Live, Hotmail, and MSN.

I guess that's how much it is worth to be able to data mine the world's largest database of unemployed people.

I'm surprised the cash didn't end up in Civil Asset Forfeiture.. :p
Surely such large quantities of US currency must be for purchasing drugs.. :p

Essentially Office is now mostly online compatible, and LinkdIn has a huge group of online professionals that use Office products. That is some sort of synergy, as the business people today say.

now, they are going to try to convert the LinkdIn user base to Office. How do they plan to do this? I have no idea.

 Tjomball wrote:
I'm surprised the cash didn't end up in Civil Asset Forfeiture.. :p
Surely such large quantities of US currency must be for purchasing drugs.. :p

I don't think he means paper money, he just means it's paid with money rather than $26bn in shares.

I asked my friends in the IT industry about this, and they said it was a less entertaining facebook. I feel the same way. If someone wants my qualifications and resume I'm doubting they'll hunt me down on linkedin.

 Monkey Tamer wrote:
I asked my friends in the IT industry about this, and they said it was a less entertaining facebook. I feel the same way. If someone wants my qualifications and resume I'm doubting they'll hunt me down on linkedin.

Depends mostly on your industry. In my field, LinkedIn is much less about socializing, and much more about networking. MS gets a giant database the feed to Big Data.

$26B worth? Not sure about that one.

 Janthkin wrote:

 Monkey Tamer wrote:
I asked my friends in the IT industry about this, and they said it was a less entertaining facebook. I feel the same way. If someone wants my qualifications and resume I'm doubting they'll hunt me down on linkedin.

Depends mostly on your industry. In my field, LinkedIn is much less about socializing, and much more about networking. MS gets a giant database the feed to Big Data.

$26B worth? Not sure about that one.

Exactly, this is much more about acquiring more Big Data than it is about making money off the users of LinkedIn. If MS thinks that LinkedIn is going to stay relevant and more professonals are going to keep inputting their information into the site and more corporations will have a presence on the site then the MS benefits from having all that data to mine and exploit. I've seen claims that LinkedIn has 433 million members and if that number is close to accurate then MS bought all that data for the price of $60/member. That's not a bad price, especially if membership continues to grow.

 Janthkin wrote:

 Monkey Tamer wrote:
I asked my friends in the IT industry about this, and they said it was a less entertaining facebook. I feel the same way. If someone wants my qualifications and resume I'm doubting they'll hunt me down on linkedin.

Depends mostly on your industry. In my field, LinkedIn is much less about socializing, and much more about networking. MS gets a giant database the feed to Big Data.

This.

In the IT world (as well as Healthcare Professionals), Linkedln is heavily used for networking, and used by Head Hunters.

$26B worth? Not sure about that one.

If it can be seamlessly integrated with MS' Office suite... many administrative outfits would pay an ass load for this.

This particularly can set in motion more data standardizations across multiple industries, particularly in HR.

You're likely to see LinkedIn used in any industry that uses lots of contract workers rather than salaried. So IT, Healthcare, and Finance are probably very represented by the members.

They send me an e-mail every now and then about jobs I may be interested in. Only one has been relevant to my field. Maybe it's better for tech and other fields.