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Microsoft to acquire LinkedIn for $26B

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Re: Microsoft to acquire LinkedIn for $26B

#451

Post by bduerst »

krmmalik wrote: post #174
nailer wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I imagine it was more like: - Microsoft has the money - LinkedIn is the biggest thing in recruiting (I don't especially like it either, but it is). I wouldn't personally hire someone via recruiters or LinkedIn, but I would hire someone via a recomendation from a contact I maintain on LinkedIn. - Microsoft makes business tools - There's a bunch of interesting opportunities for intrgating Dynamics, Yammer, and other MS…

>Actually looking forward to MS's UX folk cleaning up LinkedIn. This. This the only reason im excited about the acquisition. LinkedIn UX is awful. What makes me nervous though, is some things could get worse. (skype has gone downhill ever since the acquisition i feel).

I just hope they don't somehow move the linkedin blast-email invite button to Windows 10.

Re: Microsoft to acquire LinkedIn for $26B

#452

Post by ajmurmann »

slig wrote: post #240
Cthulhu_ wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Or a world where a forced update breaks my parents' computer that was working perfectly fine before.

As opposed to a world full of legacy systems with security holes that are part of botnets.

Re: Microsoft to acquire LinkedIn for $26B

#453

Post by lmm »

douche wrote: post #295
perseusprime11 wrote: post #276

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Put the Yammer product folks on LinkedIn and clean up the LinkedIn web and mobile products.

I'm still not sure what purpose Yammer serves. It's basically business-y old-UI Facebook, as far as I can see. But I've never understood any of that range of products - Lotus Connections, Salesforce Chatter, Yammer, etc, etc. They feel like solutions in search of a problem.

The problem is semi-persistent group chats. There are a bunch of partial existing solutions, but they all have issues:

* IRC: UX is pretty awful, any persistence of chats is ad-hoc and hand-rolled, plain text only, relatively high burden on sysadmins. * Jabber/MSN/Yahoo/etc.: very poor group chat support * Skype: very difficult to integrate with anything else, no support for self-hosting. * Slack/HipChat - good options, more or less contemporary, very much in direct competition with Yammer. Both more ephemeral though - IME Yammer ends up better than either, because it's just persistent enough that you can find old discussions/documentation when you need to.

Re: Microsoft to acquire LinkedIn for $26B

#454

Post by vadym909 »

krmmalik wrote: post #174
nailer wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I imagine it was more like: - Microsoft has the money - LinkedIn is the biggest thing in recruiting (I don't especially like it either, but it is). I wouldn't personally hire someone via recruiters or LinkedIn, but I would hire someone via a recomendation from a contact I maintain on LinkedIn. - Microsoft makes business tools - There's a bunch of interesting opportunities for intrgating Dynamics, Yammer, and other MS…

>Actually looking forward to MS's UX folk cleaning up LinkedIn. This. This the only reason im excited about the acquisition. LinkedIn UX is awful. What makes me nervous though, is some things could get worse. (skype has gone downhill ever since the acquisition i feel).

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)

Re: Microsoft to acquire LinkedIn for $26B

#455

Post by Velox »

Twisell wrote: post #432

This could be totally unrelated, but damn this is a pretty stupid bad signal. LinkedIn's iOS Developer Community cancels WWDC watch party after Microsoft purchase: http://appleinsider.com/articles/16/06/13/linkedins-ios-deve...

I imagine it's to stop hoards of reporters from coming in and bugging them for as many details as possible.

Re: Microsoft to acquire LinkedIn for $26B

#457

Post by riazrizvi »

mrweasel wrote: post #269
hammerbrostime wrote: post #94

I'm surprised by the amount of negativity about the deal here on HN. It seems like an excellent match. I could see LinkedIn as an asset for Microsoft anywhere in the realms of work collaboration and HR. No other social network besides LinkedIn comes close to complimenting MicroSoft's wheelhouse of enterprise utility.

It think the negativity is mostly due to the price tag. If I was a shareholder I would be furious over Microsoft paying $26billion for a money losing company. Even if Microsoft see some potential the rest of us aren't, and we have to assume that they are, they still need to find a way to turn a profit on the deal. Given that they bought Nokia, only to shut it down, more or less, it would be reasonable for the shareho…

I wonder how much of the value was attributed to vanity metrics like the number of times people check the site? An inflated number since LinkedIn started using short term exploitation tactics like sending Notification Badges for your contacts' Birthdays and Work Anniversaries. Personally I also feel fleeced out of an outrageous monthly subscription that was sneaked through an undeclared AppStore transaction (I got >50% of the money back but not all). At this point I'm planning on deleting my account.

Re: Microsoft to acquire LinkedIn for $26B

#458

Post by torgeek »

drzaiusapelord wrote: post #309
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…

I don't think Nadella understands either enterprise or consumer tech. The Windows 10 forced upgrades, privacy concerns, the milquetoast Surface sales, and the non-stop march of users shifting from Windows to OSX and mobile is a sign that he has no idea what he's doing. I suspect MS is destined to enter a Yahoo-like phase of remaining semi-relevant via acquisitions and legacy products enterprise finds difficult to mov…

to be fair some get junked in to azure because of bizspark as well.

Re: Microsoft to acquire LinkedIn for $26B

#459

Post by AlwaysRock »

krmmalik wrote: post #174
nailer wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I imagine it was more like: - Microsoft has the money - LinkedIn is the biggest thing in recruiting (I don't especially like it either, but it is). I wouldn't personally hire someone via recruiters or LinkedIn, but I would hire someone via a recomendation from a contact I maintain on LinkedIn. - Microsoft makes business tools - There's a bunch of interesting opportunities for intrgating Dynamics, Yammer, and other MS…

>Actually looking forward to MS's UX folk cleaning up LinkedIn. This. This the only reason im excited about the acquisition. LinkedIn UX is awful. What makes me nervous though, is some things could get worse. (skype has gone downhill ever since the acquisition i feel).

They have actually put a very serious effort into making the UI and UX a lot better over the last 6 months. It's still not great but they have a usable mobile app and chat feature now.

Re: Microsoft to acquire LinkedIn for $26B

#460

Post by Silhouette »

lloyd-christmas wrote: post #137
imron wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But large numbers of people not liking it does make it a poor business strategy - not immediately, but it's the sort of thing people will remember.

Large numbers of people in the tech community . Most people aren't us.

But a lot of people who make purchasing decisions for their business are.

And a lot of people who advise non-technical friends and family on technical matters are, too.

Also, Windows 10 updates have broken so many things for so many people that it seems quite a few of my less technically inclined friends and family are aware of the potential problems anyway.

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