Microsoft is buying LinkedIn

[?Impact]

It appears that Microsoft will be buying LinkedIn. How are they going to use the data they acquire for competitive advantage? While the obvious access to a half a billion potential customer names is fine, it will also give them great insight into the organizational structure of their customers and competitors. While many sales professionals and organizations invest months and years getting to know each customer, Microsoft now will have intelligence on almost every major customer on the planet. Will this distort the playing field and give them and their partners a huge opportunity to capture business?

[waldo]

public presentation:

reading cynic concerns that Clippy could return and fixmess with resumes!

.

[BC_chick]

Microsoft apparently tried to buy SalesForce before buying LinkedIn.

Linked in is different in that it's more of a business's-based social networking. Microsoft will obviously use the medium to increase market-share of its product.

The unfortunate part (for SalesForce) is that Microsoft's current CRM software is second to Sales Force so it was a good move on their part.

Some may shrug at the 'better business model' of companies like Microsoft and certainly, better business model could imply better purchasing power and cheaper prices.

But ultimately it means price control and that's not very good for the consumer.

Edited June 14, 2016 by BC_chick

[msj]

Haven't used LinkedIn in years.

This deal was the motivation needed to finally delete my account.

MS is paying $28 billion to buy the spam in my spam box.

[-1=e^ipi]

I'm sure they will find a way to combine it with minecraft.