Microsoft to acquire LinkedIn for $26B • Hacker News Board

Re: Microsoft to acquire LinkedIn for $26B

#741

Post by tajen » Mon, Jun 13, 2016, 9:38 PM UTC

shostack wrote: post #735

tajen wrote: post #293

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> MS could look up those org charts That's the best remark in the whole thread. Employee poking at competitors. Sales teams looking up the right people to connect with. Thanks to the LinkedIn share button, like Facebook, they can have parts of your browsing history. I don't even know whether the purchase should be allowed.

Yeah, once integrated, I'd be worried if I was an MS employee using it to scout competitors and talk to recruiters. This also gives MS some great data to possibly feed into the team that manages their investment portfolio. How valuable would it be to have a (admittedly not perfect) feed of employee growth/deflation for various companies? That would also provide a ton of leverage for future acquisitions, etc. There's…

Exactly! And the gold weapon would be able to see all employees' corporate and private emails, along with their search queries. Uh oh.

Re: Microsoft to acquire LinkedIn for $26B

#742

Post by shostack » Mon, Jun 13, 2016, 9:40 PM UTC

threeseed wrote: post #163

dforrestwilson wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm still confused. If someone is shopping for a job on LinkedIn, do they want their employer to know that? Isn't there some risk of trust violation? Why would I want to take my online resume and hand it out around work? I just don't get the synergy plays here. They all feel like a very expensive moonshot.

If you are looking for a job you just send a private message to a bunch of recruiters or key decision makers e.g. managers. Your employer would never know. It's not a moonshot at all. LinkedIn is a pretty well understood business.

Unless said employer is LinkedIn (or now MS). I wonder what sort of information they'll be leveraging without telling their employees.

Re: Microsoft to acquire LinkedIn for $26B

#743

Post by xenophonf » Mon, Jun 13, 2016, 9:48 PM UTC

fecak wrote: post #616

xenophonf wrote: post #591

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I get connection requests and I'm left baffled to what their angle is. I think these are recruiters/business developers who don't want to pay for InMail or Premium accounts.

>I literally scan the bio of the one connecting for the words 'recruiter' or 'business development' and then reject them. It's because I'm not looking to use LinkedIn for that reason. If someone is scanning the bio just to find out whether the messenger is a recruiter or in biz dev, chances are the difference between a free or paid account is trivial. As a recruiter, I was reluctant for many years to use a paid accou…

Not being a recruiter myself, I couldn't say whether the paid features are worth it, either. However, I never accept invites from people I don't know, especially when they lack context (i.e., an introductory message to go with the invite). The odds I'll at least skim an InMail message are higher, even if my responses are almost 100% of the time "Thanks, but I'm not interested right now."

That said, I log into my LinkedIn account maybe a half-dozen times a year, so I doubt my usage is typical. Take the above with a grain of salt.

Re: Microsoft to acquire LinkedIn for $26B

#744

Post by Dwolb » Mon, Jun 13, 2016, 9:49 PM UTC

exelius wrote: post #299

Great move. IMO this is Microsoft making a play for HR managed services -- look for them to sign a big deal with ADP / BenefitsExpress / buy someone like Zenefits to complement this purchase. The power and value of LinkedIn is as a recruiting platform; and recruiting is a big-money problem that's only getting worse. If they can turn LinkedIn into a benefits management platform, that would be a huge win for Microsoft…

My own view differs from the "benefits management platform" thinking. I don't think they want to do insurance or retirement benefits. I think they want you to use their productivity tools more frequently.

To me this is all about white collar productivity tools and integrations. LNKD is the keystone that manages a users journey as users ebb and flow through using (and not using) MSFT tools and products (Word, Excel, Sharepoint, Outlook, et. al.). The journey here is starting a job, starting projects, managing and coordinating projects, completing projects, and looking for new jobs. MSFT has tools in all aspects of the lifecycle except for the time between jobs.

Therefore MSFT offering gets stronger because they can keep that relationship with you even if you leave your employer and LNKD relationship gets stronger because they gain the relationship when you're still content at your current employer. The possibilities here are really interesting from a MSFT perspective.

Here's MSFT's deck on the summary [1].

[1] https://ncmedia.azureedge.net/ncmedia/2016/06/msft_announce_...

Re: Microsoft to acquire LinkedIn for $26B

#745

Post by shostack » Mon, Jun 13, 2016, 9:49 PM UTC

lloyd-christmas wrote: post #105

andylynchnz wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To get the news out without disrupting the markets - it's fairer to allow people to see news like this while the instrument is not trading.

As a prior equities trader, these were our year-makers if it happened during trading hours.

Can you elaborate on this for a non-trader?

Re: Microsoft to acquire LinkedIn for $26B

#746

Post by shostack » Mon, Jun 13, 2016, 9:51 PM UTC

applecore wrote: post #258

Ouch. Reid Hoffman's 11 percent stake in LinkedIn is going to result in a $1 billion tax bill.

Something tells me he'll get over it by sleeping on a bed of $100 bills from the net proceeds.

Re: Microsoft to acquire LinkedIn for $26B

#747

Post by bad_user » Mon, Jun 13, 2016, 9:52 PM UTC

manigandham wrote: post #575

bad_user wrote: post #392

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Twitter users actually spend time on Twitter, read status updates from hundreds of followed accounts, have it installed on their phones, etc. And at least for me Twitter has been much more interesting than Facebook. Because even though most of my friends are on Facebook, most of the people I admire are on Twitter. LinkedIn on the other hand is, depending on your point of view, either a database of incomplete, mostly…

> you can't unsubscribe from it You can unsubscribe from all it. https://www.linkedin.com/psettings/messages

No, you can't. First of all they are exposing like a dozen options, but without any way to tell them "unsubscribe from everything".

This means that they can keep adding categories. For example I don't remember an option for receiving invitations for joining groups. If this option was available I would have disabled it and guess what, it's now enabled on my account.

But far more aggravating is that I'm receiving emails straight to my Inbox from HR people even though I unsubscribed from such email. Do you know how I know that LinkedIn has sold my email address against my preferences? It's because I'm using an unique email address just for LinkedIn.

You know, I can use a menu, I can find a link, have been doing it for quite some time ;-)

Re: Microsoft to acquire LinkedIn for $26B

#748

Post by bad_user » Mon, Jun 13, 2016, 10:06 PM UTC

bduerst wrote: post #708

partiallypro wrote: post #512

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That's not a security problem waiting to happen at all. You're right, it's not. > I'm not sure how you're equating cookie-level tracking to being more invasive than OS-level tracking. Google does far more than cookie level tracking. What do you think Google Now use? Magic?

You're not making any sense - you're claiming Google tracking is magic? Google, Facebook, or any other website doesn't get OS-level tracking, and are stopped cold by a generic adblocker. Blocking OS-level tracking is a security issue because the third party software can be bought and sold to malware companies, who can push an update to infect your computer.

You don't even need ad-blocking, you can simply stop third party cookies. Firefox at least has this option.

Re: Microsoft to acquire LinkedIn for $26B

#749

Post by marssaxman » Mon, Jun 13, 2016, 10:22 PM UTC

Cthulhu_ wrote: post #160

badlogic wrote: post #100

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 are not acceptable. Whose computer is it, anyway? I don't care how useful you think it would be, if you try to force me to update I'm simply not going to use your software. No. My computer, my choice.

Re: Microsoft to acquire LinkedIn for $26B

#750

Post by rsyntax » Mon, Jun 13, 2016, 10:27 PM UTC

IMO, Microsoft has the means and resources to sift thru linkedIn metadata to gain an hiring advantage over their competitors. In addition they could probably infer what other companies are doing thru their hiring and searches. There is no other platform like this with this scale another monopoly; human resources.