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Microsoft to acquire LinkedIn for $26B

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Re: Microsoft to acquire LinkedIn for $26B

#831

Post by exelius »

feider wrote: post #828
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…

", this is a great purchase." You cant really say it's a great purchase without mentioning the price, which you didn't. I haven't done any deep analysis but my gut feeling says that 26.2B for stopping Linkedin spam is not worth it.

The price is high, but strategically Microsoft doesn't have a lot of options for new markets, and Microsoft's current markets are in decline so it needs to find new markets in order to grow. This purchase opens a huge market to them in the form of HR services, and that could easily turn into a $5-10 billion a year product for Microsoft within a decade. Everyone in the tech industry (MS included) is sitting on huge piles of cash right now, so valuations are high everywhere. It's a bit of a bubble, but it's more of a bubble driven by a lack of strong acquisition targets.

Nadella has finally given up chasing the consumer market -- this is a very good thing if you're a Microsoft shareholder. The company has never done well with consumers; Xbox is their lone success, and it took them a decade and a half to become profitable (and even then, it's tiny compared to their business products). The strength of the company is their enterprise sales organization, which they can use to drive new products to their existing customers. Google, Apple and Amazon don't have that; but Oracle, Salesforce, SAP, etc. do. Focusing on that is their only way to grow at this point.

Re: Microsoft to acquire LinkedIn for $26B

#832

Post by tdkl »

birbal wrote: post #795
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…

This is IMO a big deal because MSFT will now own business identity. Linkedin will become your business ID regardless of which company you join. Owning identity that travels across companies is incredibly powerful. This is a huge upgrade to AD. It's provisioned, verified (socially) and serves as a huge data source.

Marvelous, even less incentive to join it then, my "personal ID" gets tracked over the web enough already.

Re: Microsoft to acquire LinkedIn for $26B

#833

Post by vadym909 »

davidcgl wrote: post #695
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?

Sorry. I meant Enterprise

Re: Microsoft to acquire LinkedIn for $26B

#834

Post by vadym909 »

manigandham wrote: post #578
vadym909 wrote: post #454

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have no idea when people say Linkedin UI is awful. To me it is better looking, arranged and pleasing to look at than 99% of similar tools. (Monster, Glassdoor, Indeed, facebook) On the other hand, I absolutely hate Microsoft's UI on everything from their Flat Design, Xbox Menu, (everything except Office)

UX > UI. It might be pleasing to look at but it's quite horrible to use.

OK- Granted their UX sucks, if you use it for other than looking up people. I always suspected that may partly be intentional to prevent people and bots digging too much, scraping, misusing and using it for spam

Re: Microsoft to acquire LinkedIn for $26B

#835

Post by cenriqueortiz »

From MSFT perspective -- good move. From LinkedIn perspective, good move as well -- they have great backing and got a great deal ($). As a user, I'm sad to see this -- the end of LinkedIn as we know it. I've no interest in MSFT holding my personal info online CV presence. Perhaps time to move to someplace else.

Re: Microsoft to acquire LinkedIn for $26B

#836

Post by chrshawkes »

apapli wrote: post #823

LNKD is extremely powerful when paired with CRM. To the point that MSFT might have seen this as a better choice than buying Salesforce, especially as their own in house CRM offering (Dynamics) is becoming very strong, and far more likeable for end users. The biggest loser from this deal was Salesforce, they will be gutted. This move took me completely by surprise, and I'm pretty impressed in Nadella for pulling it of…

you work at hubspot with that ridiculous terminology? 1 + 1 = 2 period.

Re: Microsoft to acquire LinkedIn for $26B

#837

Post by chrshawkes »

gtirloni wrote: post #218
spydum wrote: post #68

just my own prediction.. msft will attempt to replatform the entire stack onto Azure, making heavy use of their Azure platform services as a way to show how scalable they are (sort of the same play they made with hotmail decades ago).

That's a very safe and sure bet. Why it would go any other way would be really puzzling.

Will they also rewrite it from Node to .NET core?

Re: Microsoft to acquire LinkedIn for $26B

#838

Post by rhizome »

autokad wrote: post #783
rhizome wrote: post #778

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's common on Craigslist amongst the spamming services [sic] like Resumator, Sourcery, etc. Furthermore, experience has taught me that any time I see a job ad on LinkedIn that says, "Apply on Company Website," I assume there will be a tedious form to fill out (not to mention account creation).

tech companies have done a really good job at stream lining the process. Most of them you just click on the job and click apply with an upload resume button and optional upload cover letter button.

I'm sorry if LinkedIn doesn't provide the analytics these companies desire, but LinkedIn already provides that functionality itself.

Re: Microsoft to acquire LinkedIn for $26B

#840

Post by new_guy123 »

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…

> 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.

That kind of justification has almost always gone wrong.

Its a great acquisition. But is the price justified?

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