Microsoft has announced that it is buying LinkedIn for $26.2 billion, one of the largest tech acquisitions in history, and that it intends to use the business social media giant to put Microsoft at the center of our work lives.
Currently, LinkedIn has 433 million members in 200 countries. Microsoft has 1.28 billion Office users worldwide. Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said in an interview with Bloomberg:
“This is about the coming together of the leading professional cloud and the leading professional network. This is the logical next step to take. We believe we can accelerate that by making LinkedIn the social fabric for all of Office.”
Nadella said that Microsoft’s vision is to place your LinkedIn profile at the center of your online work life, connecting it with Windows, Outlook, Skype, PowerPoint and other Microsoft products.
For example, Cortana (Microsoft’s digital assistant) could provide users with information on other participants in an upcoming meeting by pulling data from LinkedIn profiles. Members working on a project could pull up LinkedIn articles concerning their project or use LinkedIn profiles to search for an “expert” to help with the project.
Microsoft also sees LinkedIn playing a major role in developing a new customer relationship management (CRM) tool for sales organizations. LinkedIn analytics could be integrated with Microsoft’s Dynamics tool, which competes with Salesforce.com, to assist companies with managing their customers.
Here’s a CNBC interview with Nadella and LinkedIn CEO Jeff Weiner explaining the opportunities.
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