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Microsoft dropped a bombshell today when it announced it would purchase expert community LinkedIn for $26.2bn (#18.5bn).
In video and a article outlining the move, CEOs of both companies – the Jeff Weiner and also the Satya Nadella of Microsoft of LinkedIn – asserted LinkedIn would stay separate, but both might work closely together.
Despite issuing a profit warning this season, LinkedIn has appreciated year-on-year growth. Since Weiner joined in 2008, the company’s grown with a revenue of $ 3bn along with 433 million LinkedIn members.
It has changed many times over the years – much sometimes, and to the joy irritation of entrepreneurs, many of whom leverage the site’s Pulse publishing offering, its groups and LinkedIn ads. And while some features, like endorsements and modifications to LinkedIn group messaging might have caused controversy, the organization’s “only just begun to achieve its entire potential,” as Weiner wrote in a letter to employees.
“It isn’t just about sitting responding to this. Satya said time and time again, ‘you guys have to help write the rules, we’re doing this otherwise, we are likely to get your liberty, we shared sense of distress’ so let’s dream big and let us think about what’s possible and that is likely to be principle,” he added in an accompanying movie interview.
Some of these ideas being bandied about between the two teams following the acquisition may have positive consequences for people in the marketing area.
Outlined in Weiner’s correspondence, these include:
- Scaling the reach and engagement of LinkedIn by using its system to power the societal and identity layers of Microsoft’s ecosystem of more than a million customers. This may include weaving LinkedIn’s graph with Microsoft’s products like Outlook and Dynamic CRM
- Partnering with Microsoft to innovate solutions within enterprise which are the “ripest for disruption” such as the supply of business intelligence and collaboration
- Giving sponsored content customers ability to achieve Microsoft users everywhere across the Microsoft ecosystem
- “Redefining social selling” via the combination of sales navigator and dynamics
- Leveraging LinkedIn’s subscription capabilities to provide chances to the “massive” amount of freelancers and independent service suppliers that use Microsoft apps
The letter to employees goes on to say that LinkedIn wants to be at the forefront of innovation – and instead of looking to the likes of Apple and Amazon, being one of the major, disruptive players unhampered by needing to compromise long term investment.
“With today’s information, we won’t need to picture any of it because it’s now our reality,” Weiner writes.
Two of the critical drivers for the transfer, he added, were about creating economic chance for people in a dystopian-future-come-true of technology taking many people’s jobs (drones in warehouses, for example) and enhancing LinkedIn’s values.
We can expect to see some new feature statements following the closure of the deal at the end of the year – check out our sister website’s coverage of steps.
With the discussions occurring about the ideas above, it sounds like there’ll be a few new ways for marketers to leverage the system.
