Microsoft buys LinkedIn for $26.2 billion

I logged in to my LinkedIn for the first time today in about a year. So many resume requests I missed. Oh well.

Has anyone ever worked for ICE before? Or Macquarie?

 

Which ice? Macquarie's commodities group?

 

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intercontinental_Exchange

And yes on Macquarie.

 

No, if you look at their revenue history, the bulk of their revenue comes from "talent solutions"... which in essence is a fancy way of saying job board, though they might sell other ancillary products.

You can google to see their revenue breakdown.
Here's one for example, though not up to date in 2016.

Spoiler

I get that they have other products, social selling, interview tools, etc.

I think, ultimately, "legacy" brands are EXTREMELY difficult to change perception on, unless it is a very well thought out process, seemingly done gradually and slowly, and you look up a couple of years later and it is ultimately a different product.

I'm in the restaurant space, and there are examples galore there - old legacy chains like Olive Garden, Chili's, etc... still huge businesses, but it will be a long slow decline unless they find something that sticks.

The tech space is littered with it, too. From obvious ones like MySpace, to bigger ones like Nintendo or Sony... which still exist as strong businesses, but are on trajectories way different than anyone would have expected 5 years ago.

Will Linkedin be able to transition from that late web1.0 / early web 2.0 social resume to something more modern? Seems unlikely, especially when there are so many combatants out there. Mind you, this doesn't mean Linkedin is a bad product, dead product, or non-valuable product.

I'm just pointing out that MSFT + Slack would have made a ton more sense. Slack in 10 years has the potential to be MSFT. Online communications and productivity tools for the modern world.

So then the question is can Linkedin's current value and database value justify its price tag? Maybe. I'm no expert. It's possible. Can MSFT leverage that database ... should be able to... to what degree I don't know.

Here's a copy of a company deck discussing the combo:
https://ncmedia.azureedge.net/ncmedia/2016/06/msft_announce_160613.pdf

They do make pretty presentations! And they make the combo sound great. We shall see.

 

Who knows, they might also be bidding for Slack as we speak.

 

Been this way since Gates left.

 

That seems like a gigantic chunk of change for LinkedIn. Staggering, really, in my opinion. We'll see if it works out for Microsoft. I'm not optimistic, long term. Like some of you, I'm just sorry that it isn't in my portfolio.

 

MSFT strategy, I presume, is to combine this social media platform and their Microsoft professional products together? Can someone clarify this for me?I think I have an idea of what they're trying to do but I don't know if it's worth $26bn.

 

That would be stupid as crap, and from what I hear they are just going to build a clone of it. Think about it, if you merge skype, groupme and outlook you have slack. It's a matter of packaging it all together and making it work. That will be cheaper than just outright buying slack.

MS has acquired R, they acquired LinkedIn, they already own part of facebook... They are getting ready for some big data mining. What are they looking for?

 

What the hell is Slack

 

Don't know. Can't keep up these days with kid's and their Myspace websites.

 

I have met people there, it is good. It is a bank, not subject to a lot of the regulations on American banks.

 

IMO that's where this is heading. They acquired Skype years back to everyone's confusion but they've created it into a pretty big presence on the business/corporate side. I do agree that this purchase was probably more for the data than anything else but I wouldn't put it pass MSFt to turbo this into part of their business suite.

 

Slack is an application that combines all aspects of communication, texting, email, chat, and voice together neatly packaged. It's great for coordinating a major project, you can set deadlines, you can send group wide notifications, share documents. You already emulate a decent portion of in your workplace today most likely, but this ties it all together as one platform. If you aren't using it for group projects and such, you should really consider it.

 

MS tries to use all the parts it can, even when they kill off a product, you can find aspects of said product in another product. Like Skype, R, and minecraft, I think MS tells LinkedIn do whatever you want with it, we just want aspects of it that we can use as well.

 

Im part of a new company and we use Slack to communicate with each other...it's pretty solid from the short time we've been using it.

 

I wonder if they will be adding a new Microsoft Dynamics HR platform?

 

As the guy who brought Slack into the conversation... I'm actually not the biggest fan of it. It's nice and works, but I'm just too old/used to email as main communication and more silo'd approach.

But the generation right below mine loves it... it's growth has been pretty impressive.
http://techcrunch.com/2016/04/01/rocketship-emoji/

I mean it's still small in comparison, and having just raised at a $3.8 billion valuation, "on paper" it seems richly valued as is. And with a founder already really well off, it's not like they have to sell - I think he's implied he isn't interested in selling.

Nonetheless, while a say $10 billion valuation probably seems insane for a company generating I'd guess around $100 million of revenue a year currently (estimate based on current user count), it's not that crazy when you consider that number is going to grow exponentially the next 5 years, and that the upside of Slack is truly becoming the next MSFT. There are already tons of people building tools on top of Slack - just as MSFT built tools on top of their OS - in fact Slack has its own internal fund supporting these folks.

Anyway, I get that the LNKD buy could certainly work. It's more clear what you're getting today. But it just feels like one of many examples of M&A we've seen over the years/decades where its legacy company buying another legacy company. It might seem strange to say that about Linkedin, but it's a pretty old company by now.

When Zuckerberg/Facebook saw opportunity to acquire the emerging next big things, he pounced. At numbers that seemed insane at the time, but proved out. Instagram is huge. WhatsApp is huge. Not clear what the future of Oculus is, but "if" VR/AR takes off, it seems like they'll lead the way. They tried to buy Snapchat for a crap-ton early on but got rebuked.

 

LinkedIn seems like a mature product in terms of users.

Professional services integration will bee interesting but Microsoft needs to sustain the iron clad grip they have on enterprise software.

I've used slack and groupme. It's useful but too annoying when there's many different channels set up. You can do a lot of cool things with tier plug-ins

 

Snapchat confuses me because I don't see how that makes money at all. Sponsored content is popping up, sure, but by no means are you forced to look at it.