Microsoft Buys LinkedIn

Microsoft has agreed to buy LinkedIn today for $26.2 billion dollars.  The merger between the computer giant and the business oriented social media site certainly could offer lots of promise for Microsoft.  Being able to include a LinkedIn profile in an Outlook contact, via Cortana. or on Skype looks like it provides some value for Microsoft, providing they can actually get that done. A potential drawback, however, is that LinkedIn profiles can be full of bad or outdated information. The reason LinkedIn’s user base of over 400 million is so large is that it is not possible to delete your account. I know I haven’t touched my profile since I set it up probably over 5 years ago and I know many others whose profile is hopelessly out of date.

I’m even more skeptical of using LinkedIn technology as a social media platform for the existing Microsoft Office user base of over 1 billion users. There are a lot of users, myself included, that are determined to stay as far away from the Microsoft ecosystem as possible and like the fact that LinkedIn has remained an independent platform. And LinkedIn users rarely log into the system on a regular basis, which is hardly a great positive for a supposed social media site.

We’ve seen all this before – mergers of two powerhouses in different economic sectors and it has rarely been a success. And Microsoft has a history of being unable to truly integrate many of its recent purchases into the core of its business. I’m betting we will see the same result here.