back to article Microsoft buys LinkedIn for the price of 36 Instagrams

Microsoft is swooping in to buy CV and soapbox site LinkedIn, in an all-cash deal worth a whopping $26.2bn. The software giant is paying $196 per share for LinkedIn, a $61 premium on the enterprise social platform's closing price on last Friday. Jeff Weiner will remain CEO of LinkedIn, reporting to Microsoft’s CEO Satya …

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  1. TonyJ

    Eh?

    I see no synergy here. Unless MS are tying to either get into social media and turn LinkedIn into a Facebook clone and/or they're going to use it as a Windows 10 download path... ;)

    1. Mage Silver badge

      Re: Eh?

      It's already a bad Facebook clone.

      "Professional" is a joke.

      It's a spamfest and privacy ripper.

      1. davidp231

        Re: Eh?

        And one you can't block people on either.. in fact they catagorically state it's not possible because it "goes against the nature of the site". Good if you want to harass someone you've blocked on Failbook, as I found out the hard way.

      2. BillG
        WTF?

        Re: Eh?

        I use LinkedIn all the time, I find it a very valuable professional resource. And unlike others here I am rarely critical of Microsoft.

        But I can't see this as anything less than a complete and total disaster. I see MS using this to try to start to build a Google-type information-sharing, privacy-ripping empire. I see MS demanding everyone have an outlook.com email address the same way Google services require Gmail. I see my LI email address being spammed to high heaven while my privacy is violated more times than a stripper in the VIP room. I see LI features that only work if the Win10 app is installed. Nothing good can come of this.

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: Eh?

          > I see my LI email address being spammed to high heaven while my privacy is violated more times than a stripper in the VIP room.

          But surely it will be like Skype, now that MS own that I get a never ending stream of beautiful women wanting to be my friends. With LI, then I'll get a never ending stream on "professional" women wanting to be my friend "professionally"

        2. Vic

          Re: Eh?

          I find it a very valuable professional resource.

          Yeah, I'm looking for a job too :-)

          I see my LI email address being spammed to high heaven

          sed -i -e "s/^linkedin.*//" /etc/aliases

          You're welcome.

          Vic.

        3. BobChip
          Coat

          Re: Eh? - Nothing good can come of this?

          Past performance is usually a good indicator of future performance. (See LI profiles for clarification of the general principle). MS could easily write off a past loss of ($8 bn - Nokia), but a future loss of $26 bn really will scare the shareholders. I suspect there will be many more than 1,850 unfortunate profiles looking for new jobs this time.

          Just a question of when?

          1. Vic
            Joke

            Re: Eh? - Nothing good can come of this?

            I suspect there will be many more than 1,850 unfortunate profiles looking for new jobs this time.

            Well there you go, then - guaranteed growth...

            Vic.

    2. g e

      I found the synergy!

      " intelligent and delightful"

      Two things I associate with neither company - there's the commonality!

    3. Tim 11

      Presumably the supposed "synergy" is harvesting personal data - to what end I'm not entirely sure but it seems to be the fashion nowadays. Still, considering MS's recent performance (technical and business), I can't imaging they will actually be able to achieve this.

      The only real beneficiaries of this deal are LinkedIn shareholders though there will be some small benefit for those of us who find LinkedIn irritating, as it gradually declines and MS eventually declares it to have been "superceded" by something utterly unrelated like WCF or Surface.

    4. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Eh?

      "a LinkedIn newsfeed that serves up articles based on the project you are working on"

      So basically they are going to open up all your [private and confidential] Office365 content, scan it for interesting keywords and phrases, and serve up adverts based on this. May be they have been doing this already?

      "Office suggesting an expert to connect with via LinkedIn to help with a task you're trying to complete"

      Sounds like cyber espionage to me: company A is working on secret project X, gets a notification that company or person B is also working on a similar project. That's the sort of leak that would normally get you in court under the terms of your employment contract or NDA.

      1. Stoneshop
        Headmaster

        Re: Eh?

        So basically they are going to open up all your [private and confidential] Office365 content,

        "Working on confidential content" and "cloud services" (not limited to O365). I see a contradiction here.

    5. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Eh?

      "I see no synergy here."

      I do, sort off. You see, before we had Microsoft accounts which granted you access to their services we had MSN. Microsoft Network. It was basically rolled into Hotmail but in the end it was still MSN, and much more than a media site alone. It was a social media network on its own, but without the more intruding stuff which you had in areas such as Twitter and Facebook. In fact: this was the only social media network I somewhat used. Heck; together with MSN Messenger things simply worked.

      Well, we all know what happened next. They bought Skype and that was suppose to replace MSN Messenger, the whole MSN network also got dumped in favour of Microsoft accounts and that was basically it. Skype would replace some of the functionality (I never liked Skype though) and using outlook.com you could "somewhat" use social-media alike stuff.

      So here we are. Instead of expanding on something they already had and trying to perfect it they dumped it in favour of stuff which a lot of people never cared for. And now they're trying to re-invent the wheel using LinkedIn. Of course at a time where lots of people have given up on this as well.

      I have to give Microsoft some credit: if anyone can make something out of the mess which is LinkedIn right now it's Microsoft in my opinion. They certainly have the potential. Only problem: will anyone actually care?

    6. martinusher Silver badge

      Re: Eh?

      Way back I knew a relatively senior engineering manager who was temporarily redundant. He got a job as a recruiter, a seemingly odd move. His take on this -- "If I want to have the pick of the apples then I'll get a job at the market". That's exactly what happened -- he got a nice job out of it.

      Linkedin is not just a social media website, its network of developers can not only help you cherry pick the ones you want but it can also give you a very good idea what another company -- a competitor maybe -- is up to.

    7. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Eh?

      I see no synergy here

      It's in the letter sent to all MS staff in the justified hope that someone would email it to the press (you can't really call it leaking as it was clearly intended for public consumption).

      "new opportunities will be created for monetization through individual and organization subscriptions and targeted advertising"

      Or, translated, it'll be harder to see anything on LinkedIn without advertising in headers, footers, popups, pop-unders and "on exit" messages, and probably also on your image. Secondly, as LinkedIn is entirely US based you will have absolutely zero control over the data they have, and my experience suggests that LinkedIn has never deleted anything I removed, only made it unavailable to the website (the continued accuracy of suggestions of people to hook up with gave it away).

      In addition, they will most likely attempt to move everyone into "professional" and so try to charge you for the fact that you are supplying personal data - MS has gone so keen on subscriptions that it even decided to play nice with Linux until it has enough people hooked (ask the educational establishment how that well that panned out for them).

      On the plus side, it takes exactly someone like Microsoft to ruin the thing and re-open that market for competition.

      Maybe Xing will thus finally take off.

      1. Vic

        Re: Eh?

        In addition, they will most likely attempt to move everyone into "professional" and so try to charge you for the fact that you are supplying personal data

        Whilst I hesitate to describe LinkedIn as a "golden goose", that's certainly how you go about strangling it...

        Vic.

  2. Anonymous Coward
    Facepalm

    Bonkers

    MSFT opens down 2%, markets don't see it.

    1. BasicChimpTheory

      Re: Bonkers

      You're looking to the market to make sense of this (or anything else)...?

      The market saw MS drop 1/4 of its cash reserves on a single asset. That is the full explanation of the market's response. IT'll go back up (maybe higher) in a few days.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Bonkers

        That is the full explanation of the market's response. IT'll go back up (maybe higher) in a few days.

        Higher on exactly what basis? Having liquidated businesses like aQuantive in a failed c$5bn attempt to be like Google in adds, having liquidated Nokia in an c$8bn attempt to be like Apple, now they want to repeat the trick burn $26bn to be like Facebook?

        Tell us how the markets are going to see this as a positive?

        1. IsJustabloke
          Trollface

          Re: Bonkers RE Tell us how the markets are going to see this as a positive?

          From the article....

          "Microsoft’s shares were down five per cent on its Friday closing price on the news but have since recovered"

          I guess the markets weren't that bothered after all.

        2. BasicChimpTheory

          Re: Bonkers

          Sorry. I didn't mean to infer the market was going to do something SENSIBLE.

          MSFT will recover this 2% in little time. Why? I dunno. Why was it so well valued to begin with?

          If it is such a porr business decison and the market is such a good judge of, well, anything, then why was the devaulation so small when the cost was so significant?

          This adjustment is a rounding error.

          1. PrivateCitizen

            Re: Bonkers

            @BasicChimpTheory

            This adjustment is a rounding error.

            I agree. While the shares are slightly down over a couple of days ago, on a larger timescale its not really noticable.

            Using share price to gauge the long term value of a business decisions always seems a bit irrational to me.

            1. Anonymous Coward
              Anonymous Coward

              Re: Bonkers

              Using share price to gauge the long term value of a business decisions always seems a bit irrational to me.

              Unless your business is trading shares, which is a wholly different world to operating a company for profit..

      2. John Brown (no body) Silver badge

        Re: Bonkers

        "The market saw MS drop 1/4 of its cash reserves on a single asset. That is the full explanation of the market's response."

        I must admit, overpaying by such a huge amount for a social network, I expected to see a more significant drop in MS share value. If this all goes pear shaped I can see shareholders suing. I'm buying shares in popcorn!

  3. Paul Webb

    LinkedIn shareholders must be very happy

    But the rest sounds like, especially the language, a dystopian nightmare. With adverts.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: LinkedIn shareholders must be very happy

      Not dystopian for me. I've got mad DevOps skills.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: mad DevOps skills.

        These will make you valuable for at most two months! :-)

      2. Sammy Smalls

        Re: LinkedIn shareholders must be very happy

        That made me smile. I want to go to an interview for the sole purpose of using that line. Pictures of Spuds interview in Transporting.

  4. Sammy Smalls

    In terms of a strategy, why is it that my first thought was of Napoleon invading Russia in the winter? Or better still - buying Nokia.

    Maybe I'm wrong, but there must be something better to spend $26B on.

    1. Gunboat Diplomat
      Windows

      @Sammy Smalls

      "Maybe I'm wrong, but there must be something better to spend $26B on."

      Oh absolutely, I would have thought porting everything they have onto Linux (Office, etc) would be good - they'd get more sales probably.

      Of course, to me the dream would be to just have the Windows 7's UI as a Desktop manager on top of a Linux distro and get AD ported to Linux and then we'd never have to see Windows on the server or desktop ever again.

      [Reluctant] Windows User [at work] icon

      Alternatively, throw $25 billion in a fire and buy linked in with the final billion?

      1. PrivateCitizen

        Windows on Linux

        Of course, to me the dream would be to just have the Windows 7's UI as a Desktop manager on top of a Linux distro and get AD ported to Linux and then we'd never have to see Windows on the server or desktop ever again.

        This would just teach you to hate your Linux distro instead of Windows.

    2. Warm Braw

      there must be something better to spend $26B on

      Well, that amount of money would have bought nearly 4 Nokias - and despite the burning platform crashing in Microsoft's ownership that money at least bought Microsoft something it could have built on and some tangible assets.

      But LinkedIn? An evanescent user base and 10,000 employees with titles like Talent Solutions Solutions Consultant (I kid you not)? Whose operating income is increasingly negative?

      1. Midnight

        "But LinkedIn? An evanescent user base and 10,000 employees with titles like Talent Solutions Solutions Consultant (I kid you not)? Whose operating income is increasingly negative?"

        Perhaps that position could be replaced by a contractor. A Talent Solutions Solutions Consultant Consultant, if you will.

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          A Talent Solutions Solutions Consultant Consultant

          That's one of the few reasons I like Twitter: it forces you to find shorter expressions. In this case, "loser".

  5. Anonymous Coward
    Trollface

    The first thing that will happen ...

    ... you cannot access your LinkedIn profile unless you are running Windows 10 with telemetry back to MS enabled.

    1. Someone Else Silver badge
      FAIL

      And the next thing that will happen ...

      ...is the self-decimation of the LinkedIn user base. All that will be left are a few fanbois with titles like the one listed in an earlier post (e.g. Windows Solutions Solutions Consultant, or Facilitator of Lost Causes or some such).

    2. ecofeco Silver badge

      Re: The first thing that will happen ...

      You joke but that is a very real possibility.

      MS wants everything on their Azure cloud and buying LinkIn and Windows 10 is part of the roadmap.

  6. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Pretty obvious, no ?

    MS now has the inside scoop on technology trends - or rather what people are posting on LinkedIn as "hot skills". Clearly they think they can do something with that.

    1. Dan 55 Silver badge

      Re: Pretty obvious, no ?

      Hire people to write an OS that doesn't suck/blow (depending on your preference)?

    2. Stoneshop
      Windows

      Re: Pretty obvious, no ?

      An Agile Python DevOps Cloud Container version of Windows.

    3. Vic

      Re: Pretty obvious, no ?

      or rather what people are posting on LinkedIn as "hot skills"

      I've got a number of endorsements for the things I do - the vast majority from people who've never seen me do those things. I've even got an endorsement for something I can't do (from several different people).

      Yep - LinkedIn is a real goldmine of valuable information...

      Vic.

      1. Dr Scrum Master

        Re: Pretty obvious, no ?

        I've got a number of endorsements for the things I do - the vast majority from people who've never seen me do those things. I've even got an endorsement for something I can't do (from several different people).

        Me too!

        Recommendations were bad enough with mutual back-slapping by people you'd never ever want to work with, but the endorsements are just a joke.

  7. Kristian Walsh Silver badge

    Yeah, but that's Zimbabwean Dollars, right?

    Okay, at least LinkedIn turns a profit (somthing Instagram never did), but $26 billion is a lot to recoup.

    $2.x bn for Mojang, aka Minecraft, made sense at its revenues and profits, this just seems insane.

    1. Eddy Ito
      Meh

      Re: Yeah, but that's Zimbabwean Dollars, right?

      You might want to check that again. Yahoo Finance has LinkedIn's Diluted EPS at -1.3 for the past year and their profit margin at -5.27%. Sure their quarterly revenue growth is nice but still you wonder how long that will last.

  8. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Soon, no more LinkedIn spam!

    With any luck, Microsoft golden touch will make LinkedIn collapse, and I will no longer have to wade through all the spam they sent me over the years, with a faked From address and everything.

    On the other hand, Microsoft probably wants to borrow their expertise for the GWX marketing campaign: nothing like an e-mail appearing to come from your boss and urging to you to install W10 ASAP.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Soon, no more LinkedIn spam!

      With any luck, Microsoft golden touch will make LinkedIn collapse, and I will no longer have to wade through all the spam they sent me over the years, with a faked From address and everything.

      Interesting, I get next to no spam from LI. Not sure what I did because I haven't blacklisted it. Oh yes, I recall, I stripped the profile until it only had a single line of data. That keeps my name in use, but anyone wanting any real data will have to get in touch - and that account has a rather heavy duty spam filter on it.

      I also have a fake account, and it's very funny to see the link requests come in even though I made the name borderline weird :).

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Soon, no more LinkedIn spam!

        @AC How weird?

        Us brits do love some of your strange US names (assuming your from the Federal Republic of Trump)

        My favourites are Cheese,Chow and Danish but maybe because it's food.

        Full list here:

        http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2520431/Everybody-loves-Cheese-Weirdest-baby-names-2013-inspired-dairy-zoo-animals-breakfast-pastries.html

        (From the Daily Mail, so it must be true)

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: Soon, no more LinkedIn spam!

          assuming your from the Federal Republic of Trump

          Nope, I'd still spell that with "you're" so I'm at least European (sorry, couldn't resist, but you started it with assuming I'm a 'Merican :) ).

  9. Lunatik
    Facepalm

    Double-yew-tee-eff

    $60 a user?!

    Looking forward to the $22B writedown in 2020.

    Nice work, Satya.

    1. Vic

      Re: Double-yew-tee-eff

      Looking forward to the $22B writedown in 2020.

      If it follows the Nokia pattern, it'll be a $32B writedown...

      Vic.

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