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Microsoft to acquire LinkedIn for $26B

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Re: Microsoft to acquire LinkedIn for $26B

#361
> 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.

Re: Microsoft to acquire LinkedIn for $26B

#363

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.

Yeah, I am debating closing mine today.

Re: Microsoft to acquire LinkedIn for $26B

#364

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not just the UX but all aspects of brand and design. LinkedIn is hideous, difficult to use, buggy, and creepy. If MSFT can fix a few of those it'll be a win. If not it's hard to see the platform living another 5 years.

> LinkedIn is hideous, difficult to use, buggy, and creepy. If MSFT can fix a few of those it'll be a win. Have you seen Windows 10 yet?

I feel you're implying Windows 10 is not a well-designed OS.

It's actually quite wonderful and usable OS, IMHO.

Re: Microsoft to acquire LinkedIn for $26B

#365

"Think: everyone who graduates from college and looks for a job will now have a Microsoft account." https://twitter.com/saschasegan/status/742342770891862016

Am I the only one who has applied and gotten jobs without ever creating a LinkedIn account?

After hearing all the horror stories about their email spam (and how they spam all your contacts) and how random recruiters contact you with irrelevant offers, I have (so far) managed to stay completely off LinkedIn and hope to never have to sign up.

Re: Microsoft to acquire LinkedIn for $26B

#366

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Like the forced Win10 updates, spyware, ads directly in the OS which you paid for, ...?

The forced updates are something that's been long overdue. Imagine a world without old versions of IE that your webapps still have to support because else you're losing 10% of your users.

Forced updates have destroyed the good feelings I had about Windows 10 and made it likely my next computer won't be Windows. Specifically, it's the unexpected reboot that infuriates me. I was running a long simulation overnight and in the morning my computer had rebooted and greets me with "Hi. We've got some new features to get excited about." Spontaneous reboots are NOT OK.

Re: Microsoft to acquire LinkedIn for $26B

#367
post #30
post #4

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

Well they did do $3 billion in revenue last year. http://finance.yahoo.com/q/is?s=LNKD+Income+Statement&annual

That's revenue. They made no profit for that year and actually ended up losing money.

Re: Microsoft to acquire LinkedIn for $26B

#369
post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ah, the armchair critic. I'm by no means a Microsoft fanboy, but things have been much better under Satya Nadella.

Before Satya was CEO, it was normal to see a bunch of Nokia Lumia phones in every bus, tram or metro train in Germany. Right now it would be hard to find even one, and Windows Phone seems to be an abandoned project. So I cannot entirely agree that Satya is so much better as a CEO than Ballmer.

Ballmer lost the mobile battle, not Satya, by the time Satya took control (Feb. 2014) it was too late in the game to make a difference. Just throwing good money after bad at that point.

Re: Microsoft to acquire LinkedIn for $26B

#370
post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ah, the armchair critic. I'm by no means a Microsoft fanboy, but things have been much better under Satya Nadella.

Before Satya was CEO, it was normal to see a bunch of Nokia Lumia phones in every bus, tram or metro train in Germany. Right now it would be hard to find even one, and Windows Phone seems to be an abandoned project. So I cannot entirely agree that Satya is so much better as a CEO than Ballmer.

Maybe that's why Satya is a good CEO. He pulled them away from an unprofitable money sink that was created by Ballmer.
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