Bill Gates makes big move into social media enterprise, as Microsoft buys LinkedIn for $26.2B in cash

Microsoft announced Monday that it would acquire professional networking site LinkedIn for $196 per share in an all-cash transaction valued at $26.2 billion. LinkedIn will become a part of Microsoft productivity and business process segment but will still keep its branding and product.

In an email to LinkedIn employees, LinkedIn CEO Jeff Weiner explained why he decided to sell the company to Microsoft. Weiner mentions Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella’s leadership as a driving factor.

“The Microsoft that has evolved under Satya’s leadership is a more agile, innovative, open and purpose-driven company,” Weiner wrote. “It was the latter point that first had me thinking we could make this work, but it was his thoughts on how we’d do it that got me truly excited about the prospect.”

When Satya first proposed the idea of acquiring LinkedIn, he said it was absolutely essential that we had alignment on two things: Purpose and structure. On the former, it didn’t take long before the two of us realized we had virtually identical mission statements. For LinkedIn, it was to connect the world’s professionals to make them more productive and successful, and for Microsoft it was to empower every individual and organization in the world to achieve more. Essentially, we’re both trying to do the same thing but coming at it from two different places: For LinkedIn, it’s the professional network, and for Microsoft, the professional cloud.

Both of us recognized that combining these assets would be unique and had the potential to unlock some enormous opportunities.

For example:

• Massively scaling the reach and engagement of LinkedIn by using the network to power the social and identity layers of Microsoft’s ecosystem of over one billion customers. Think about things like LinkedIn’s graph interwoven throughout Outlook, Calendar, Active Directory, Office, Windows, Skype, Dynamics, Cortana, Bing and more.
• Accelerating our objective to transform learning and development by deeply integrating the Lynda.com/LinkedIn Learning solution in Office alongside some of the most popular productivity apps on the planet (note: 6 of the top 25 most popular Lynda.com courses are related to Microsoft products).
• Realizing LinkedIn’s full potential to truly change the way the world works by partnering with Microsoft to innovate on solutions within the enterprise that are ripest for disruption, e.g., the corporate directory, company news dissemination, collaboration, productivity tools, distribution of business intelligence and employee voice, etc.
• Expanding beyond recruiting and learning & development to create value for any part of an organization involved with hiring, managing, motivating or leading employees. This human capital area is a massive business opportunity and an entirely new one for Microsoft.
• Giving Sponsored Content customers the ability to reach Microsoft users anywhere across the Microsoft ecosystem, unlocking significant untapped inventory.
• Redefining social selling through the combination of Sales Navigator and Dynamics.
• Leveraging our subscription capabilities to provide opportunities to the massive number of freelancers and independent service providers that use Microsoft’s apps to run their business on a daily basis.

Source: Yahoo News