Microsoft Corp. and LinkedIn Corporation on Monday announced they have entered into a definitive agreement under which Microsoft will acquire LinkedIn for $196 per share in an all-cash transaction valued at $26.2 billion, inclusive of LinkedIn’s net cash. LinkedIn will retain its distinct brand, culture and independence. Jeff Weiner will remain CEO of LinkedIn, reporting to Satya Nadella, CEO of Microsoft. Reid Hoffman, chairman of the board, co-founder and controlling shareholder of LinkedIn, and Weiner both fully support this transaction. The transaction is expected to close this calendar year.
This deal is so incredibly boring I can’t even be bothered to finish this sen
Microsoft screwing about with ‘social media’ again to try and ‘find itself’.
LinkedIn CEO is sitting there saying to himself “Fantastic, the investors and I have an exit!”
Edited 2016-06-14 14:01 UTC
Edit comment doesn’t change subject lines for some reason. No means ‘Now’, obviously.
it fits so well with microsoft. Especially if the rumours of them working on HR products proves true.
LinkedIn is effectively your online CV its up to date and great as a means of screening/tracking applicants and staff.
Really? I’m not in HR, but involved in hiring. What I’ve seen is worse than Old school resumes. I mean inflating your own resume is one thing, but on Linked in you have so much BS accolades and confirmed skills and what not. Its totally worthless to me. I can’t trust any of it.
Is that real money? Are they really going to pay 26 billion US dollar for that? Maybe for a specific type of user there is some actual reason for using it, but from my own experience, it had zero actual benefit for my professional career. I doubt that headhunters except from very special cases are actually active on it, and really, me and my friends endorsing each other’s abilities, what’s even the point?
In the UK, EVERY recruitment agency uses LinkedIn. Each one is paying for the service.
They don’t all advertise roles directly on it, but if I change my setting I get multiple approaches a day. The industry seems to be galvanising towards it.
Obviously mileage will vary, but I screen all job applicants via LinkedIn. Especially when checking their CV for discrepancies and references in previous roles.
You may want to update yours, you never know it Might benefit your career! If not, no loss
Yep, even with my profile not touched for a couple of years and not set for seeking a job, I still get regular PMs from various recruiters on it, and endless connection requests from them too. It seems that in Ireland and the UK at least it’s a key tool for the recruitment industry.
This is news to me. I steer well clear of all social media but friends of mine in the same industry (£100k+ p.a. avg earnings) have had zero approaches from relevant agencies. Instead, they tend to get approaches from former work colleagues from years earlier that they would rather avoid. It’s a joke, basically.
I also get regular PMs from agencies even when not looking just because there is a largish turnover in recruitment agency staff and newcomers are either trying to build up their own portfolio or are checking that inherited lists are worth holding onto.
It’s all about that user base.
Linkedin starts to matter more when you get into jobs paying $60-80k US and up. I found my latest job through it. It’s still an awful, bleak, corporatized experience.
Closed my LinkedIn account before Microsoft prevented. Didn’t really use it anyway.
MS paid how much for what?! Really?! I have linkedin marked as spam on all my web accounts. I get all kinds of crap emails from linkedin accounts, most of them filled with scam offers and advertisements for anything under the sun. I’ve never had the idea it was a legit company… I just don’t see it. Craig’s List is more legit from what I’ve seen.
LinkedIn always looked like that weird, messed up resume you had to do in high school. It made no sense, your parents told you to just do it but they would explain how real resumes worked later, and then you got a job by completely ignoring its half-baked design.
If a company requires a LinkedIn account to apply to a job (some do), I ignore that company. They are missing the forest for the trees, and if it’s really that important to them, they are betting way too much on trendiness.
Looks like the most stupid move in Microsoft’s history.
LinkedIn was rapidly transforming from a professional network into a spam network. A sinking ship. A burning platform. Ever since they started using ‘Endorsements’ (the LinkedIn version of Facebook’s ‘Like It’ button), there is truely nobody taking any information on LinkedIn serious, how could you?
Great if you are looking for recruiters to poach you but is that worth 26 billion??
And how is this going to integrate with any of Microsofts other products? It’s insane.
And with that announcement I closed my LinkedIn account. Good-bye LinkedIn.
Must Microsoft spread its cancer everywhere?!? Now I guess we can expect LinkedIn to slowly deteriorate until it’s an unholy mess that nobody wants to use.
How would that be any different than how LinkedIn is now?
Touche! 🙂
It’s not spreading, it’s receiving the LinkedIn cancer.
It could be argued that already happened.
I would not cal this news item boring but more likely weird. Myself, as a lot of others, can’t stop wondering: why? What’s the point of it?
It was pretty much a given that LinkedIn sold out. The stakeholders are probably cashing in before the economic collapse of the US and European banking system. I saw this coming and decided to do my own version of LinkedIn called JobSeeker Europe (will do other areas of world soon).
I suggest you use a chat client like WeChat (with it’s own QR code reader) and JobSeeker together to enable the use of a QR code for each persons CV Bio entry.
JobSeeker Europe: http://jobseeker.advertslife.net/eu/“