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Microsoft to acquire LinkedIn for $26B

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Re: Microsoft to acquire LinkedIn for $26B

#691

Post by GCA10 »

oblio wrote: post #150

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 oxymor…

Well said. There are lots of reasons for skilled software engineers to despise LinkedIn. They don't need its version of networking, and they find recruiters' endless serenades tiresome.

But in most other lines of work, the recruiters don't knock so often (or so cluelessly) ... and the access to other people's profiles actually is quite handy. Sales. Finance. Media. Education. Law. Non-profits. It's a long list.

It's anyone's guess whether Microsoft can execute the bulk of its strategic plan for LinkedIn. But the plan is not foolish.

Re: Microsoft to acquire LinkedIn for $26B

#692

Post by bluedino »

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Re: Microsoft to acquire LinkedIn for $26B

#694

Post by pilom »

Xyik wrote: post #643

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.

The problem is that revenue is not profit. If expenses are greater than revenue and the trends don't show that changing soon (i.e. "default dead") then it is extremely hard to justify such a high valuation. There are the employees, the physical infrastructure, the code they've written, the brand name, and maybe the marketing value of the users, but granting a valuation based on consistently negative profit is somewhat silly.

Re: Microsoft to acquire LinkedIn for $26B

#695

Post by davidcgl »

vadym909 wrote: post #491

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

Are you saying Google should've bought LinkedIn? How does that contribute to Google cloud platform?

Re: Microsoft to acquire LinkedIn for $26B

#697

Post by malka »

vtlynch wrote: post #684
oblio wrote: post #150

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 oxymor…

Here is the main problem: Who likes LinkedIn? Sure, we can debate its usefulness, how popular it is outside of IT, etc. But I think across the board, no one LIKES LinkedIn.

You dont need to be liked to be popular. How many people like facebook ?

Re: Microsoft to acquire LinkedIn for $26B

#698

Post by dang »

zzalpha wrote: post #102
ivoras wrote: post #11

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 strat…

Well this is a content free comment... nice snark, though. Edit: My apologies. Judging by the discussion here, I guess we expect high quality comments here at Redd... uhh Hacker News unless it's about Microsoft. My bad. Guess I didn't read that fine print...

It's true that the comment was snarky and unsubstantive. The assumption that other people are idiots tends to degrade discussion quality.

Still, please don't respond by making the thread even worse.

Re: Microsoft to acquire LinkedIn for $26B

#699

Post by sanderjd »

GCA10 wrote: post #691
oblio wrote: post #150

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 oxymor…

Well said. There are lots of reasons for skilled software engineers to despise LinkedIn. They don't need its version of networking, and they find recruiters' endless serenades tiresome. But in most other lines of work, the recruiters don't knock so often (or so cluelessly) ... and the access to other people's profiles actually is quite handy. Sales. Finance. Media. Education. Law. Non-profits. It's a long list. It's…

> They don't need its version of networking

I don't really get this - it's weird to me that when I meet other developers at meetups or conferences or wherever, it doesn't seem "cool" to connect on LinkedIn, but nothing else fills that same role. I'm happy to trade GitHub profiles, but unless both of us do most of our interesting work in the open, which statistically we don't, then that's a much less informative profile.

Re: Microsoft to acquire LinkedIn for $26B

#700

Post by redwards510 »

mistermann wrote: post #260
threeseed wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually there hasn't been enough talk about the companies LinkedIn acquired. Connectifier - recruiting intelligence Lynda - online learning FlipTop - predictive marketing RunHop - personalised content Refresh.io - relationship content surfacing These could be huge additions to Azure, Office 365, Bing, Cortana etc.

Don't know if Lynda is a particularly great platform for training but imho MS would be well advised to spend the pittance it would cost to develop high quality free training for all of its applications. Productive users of your tools is important, or should be.

You mean something like Microsoft Virtual Academy[1] or Channel9 [2]? Both are free, excellent learning resources on par with Lynda or Pluralsight.

[1] http://microsoftvirtualacademy.com/ [2] https://channel9.msdn.com/

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