Recently, on June 13th 2016, Microsoft the leading company in computer software systems and applications signed an agreement with LinkedIn for an amount of $26.2 billion and made the leading news in the media.
Microsoft Corporation is the leading platform and productivity company for the mobile-first, cloud-first world, and its mission is to empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more.
Microsoft refers to Microsoft Corp. and its affiliates, including Microsoft Mobile Oy, a subsidiary of Microsoft. Microsoft Mobile Oy develops, manufactures and distributes Lumia and Asha and Nokia X mobile phones and other devices.
It was founded by Paul Allen and Bill Gates on 4 April 1975.
LinkedIn
LinkedIn’s founders are Reid Hoffman, Allen Blue, Konstantin Guericke, Eric Ly and Jean-Luc Vaillant. LinkedIn started out in the living room of co-founder Reid Hoffman in 2002.
The site officially launched on May 5, 2003. At the end of the first month in operation, LinkedIn had a total of 4,500 members in the network.
The company is publicly held and has a diversified business model with revenues coming from talent solutions, marketing solutions and premium sLinkedIn is currently available in 24 languages: Arabic, English, Simplified Chinese, Traditional Chinese, Czech, Danish, Dutch, French, German, Indonesian, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Malay, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Russian, Spanish, Swedish, Tagalog, Thai and Turkish.
LinkedIn has more than 9,700 full-time employees with offices in 30 cities around the world. LinkedIn started off 2012 with about 2,100 full-time employees worldwide, up from around 1,000 at the beginning of 2011 and about 500 at the beginning of 2010 subscription products.
ACQUISITION
The acquisition of the LinkedIn corporation by Microsoft Corporation is said to be a great move in expanding the horizon of Microsoft Corporation as a company in the social networking aspect and as a whole. Microsoft can reach out a varied number of customers through this and it can hold up a huge turnover for the company.
LinkedIn is in itself a great social networking site which has millions connected to it and therefore, Microsoft acquiring it is a great step into the market.
Though, Microsoft says LinkedIn will retain its own brand and independence, and existing CEO Jeff Weiner will remain and report directly to Satya Nadella. Microsoft is planning to close its acquisition later this year, and the deal has been unanimously approved by the boards of directors of both companies.
This deal is the First big step and deal by Satya Nadella after he took the position of CEO. It’s clear this is a big acquisition for Microsoft, both in terms of cash value and what LinkedIn brings to the company. More than 433 million people use LinkedIn worldwide to network, find jobs, and reconnect with old colleagues.
This deal will surely boost the companiesā social networking portion. Though the deal is said to be yet a ādefinitive agreementā and the deal is expected to close by the end of this year.
Microsoft has some big hopes through this deal to enter into the social networking market as it tried four years back also but did not do well, which was when Microsoft spent $1.2Billion on Yammer.
LinkedIn and Microsoft both have enormous amount of data about their customers that can potentially be mined to offer automated suggestions and other features that make business processes quicker and simpler.
LinkedIn CEO is said to be having full faith in Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella as he says that he has clear vision and takes the full advantage of the opportunities in a very efficient manner, and according to Weiner LinkedIn will remain an independent entity under Microsoft.
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BY: DEVIKA SHARMA
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