Unlike Snapchat or Instagram, which could very likely turn into MySpace 2.0 or 3.0, Linkedin is actually very entrenched in its market.

What market is exactly that? I still have no idea what Linkedin is all about.

Edit: Yes, keep downvoting me, asking questions about LinkedIn clearly doesn't add to the discussion. sigh

Recruiting. It's huge.

Also just B2B sales in general. Anything that makes getting in touch with decision makers easier is basically a money faucet.

And isn't Linkedin the only network who got people to pay subscriptions? That's extremely interesting for MS.

On demographics alone, though, the deal doesn't seem to make sense.

I read this in Trump's voice.

Recruiting on LinkedIn is huge. Very, very, very big. This is really a not dumb deal by Microsoft, believe me. I don't know but I've heard from hundreds of people who've told me this is a huge move. It will be amazing.

It seems like LinkedIn is more the butt of jokes now than in its heyday when everyone was advised to get on it. Heyday being 2011-ish? Or is there a large number of C-level type people who went to elite colleges and are SV VCs who use it a lot, who are just out of my social league?

In my circles (software dev in europe) everyone is on LinkedIn and a LOT of recruiting goes through it. I don't like it at all, but it is the status quo for recruiting in many countries.

IT generally, yes. anything else - i have not met anybody who actually uses it. most/all have a basic, outdated profile, didn't log there for 3 years, and 0 activity. job search is done in other ways

I think it being the butt of jokes could be isolated to the tech crowd. You're not going to find much value and definitely be more critical of it if you aren't hurting for employment opportunities.

I'm curious - what do people use now to find jobs? I'm still relying pretty heavily on LinkedIn for recruiters to contact me.

No, people at all levels in engineering and manufacturing use it. It's odd for me to search for a coworker or potential employer and not find them, although some just have an empty profile.

LinkedIn is basically Facebook for white collar people.

It has a news feed, friends, events etc. But also has a jobs section. Given how ubiquitous it is every recruiter and sales guy is on there trying to push stuff.

I think Facebook is the Facebook for white collar people. I do know people who use Linkedin heavily, but it's a separate thing (personal vs professional networks).

Events is deeply broken though

LinkedIn is Monster+Facebook on steroids.

Facebook for employees; not just recruiting, but sales and B2B generally.

This just isn't true. There's nothing about LinkedIn that makes it any more indispensable than those sites or Monster.com or any other site popular with recruiters in the past.

This is going to go down in history as one of the most overpriced, worst acquisitions of all time. LinkedIn has already become more associated with being spammy than with any positive connotations.

Yeah, its spammy, but spam from a single source is pretty easy to manage. As a consultant and writer it would be much more difficult to do my job without the ubiquitous ability to contact people at other companies easily.

I'm not saying its the best, but when the alternative is nothing at all, I can't really fault it for doing what it needs to to make money.

Also of note, a 25% reduction in sales and marketing expense would have made it profitable this last quarter, so evidently there are plenty of ways it is adding value to others.

I love the common assumption that you can just stop all sales and marketing activity and nothing will happen. LinkedIn makes its money from selling $80k enterprise contracts for Premium. They don't write themselves.

I take it you don't work in enterprise ? It's terribly popular and I would imagine if you're over 40 then you may well be spending more time on it than Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Snapchat combined.

Given Microsoft is trying to double down on the corporate space it is a pretty smart buy. Being about to push Azure/Office 365 through it could be invaluable.

I'm not currently in enterprise but I've worked at Ford and U of Mich. before so I have experience in that space. Thing do tend to get entrenched in enterprise space more so than in smaller businesses, but even still LinkedIn doesn't have any tentacles that make it irreplaceable. When the next thing comes along, enterprise users will be slower to switch off LinkedIn, but they will do so.

If Microsoft had paid a lot less I could maybe see this purchase being more logical, but at $26 billion I just cannot agree this is a smart buy on any level.

Being spammy -and- having its user database liberated at frequent intervals.

Well, regular users don't mind the spam as much and might not even know or realize the true impact of those account leaks.

Plus Microsoft is quite likely to take care of both problems. At least on the security front, since 2005 or so, I haven't heard of any leaks on their part.

This can only be my impression, however, given the amount of "LinkedIn trainers" people and given the amount of people that are willing to pay a LinkedIn trainer to enhance their profiles, I would not be that sure that there's nothing indispensable in LinkedIn.

This is the most bizarre thing I've heard. People want Snapchat, Instagram. People have LinkedIn. No one wants it. It's a dinosaur. People using it actively just haven't realized it's dead already.

clearly you know what you're talking about...</sarcasm>. One word: ads.

I would like to second this thought! Even with ad money HOW?!?@?#? But on the other hand this does feel right, Linkedin does feel like the Microsoft of Social Networking.

"The Microsoft of Social Networking" Love it.

Well they did do $3 billion in revenue last year. http://finance.yahoo.com/q/is?s=LNKD+Income+Statement&annual

Revenue isn't really relevant when you're losing money as fast as Linkedin. They have no real competitors, and they still aren't able to turn a profit.

Even $3 billion is to much.

They're not losing money all that fast and are spending heavily on growth. They also have a lot of money in the bank ($3.1B in cash and short term securities) so that's pretty much exactly what it's there for.

Their net income is 0.6% of their valuation.

They loss money, right?

That valuation should be for more like $3B in profit!

Based on the Yahoo link it looks like they lost money this year and last.

With a $-166 million Net Income.

That's revenue. They made no profit for that year and actually ended up losing money.

An existing user base is priceless. In france, when you sell a shop, you also sell for the "fond de commerce", meaning that an existing list of client is part of the price.

You also have to consider that so many companies use linkedin. It's an industry standard for professional networking, which has a different meaning than networking with friend ("consumer" networking I guess ?).

I am surprised why people think that amount is outrageous. LinkedIn has so far been pathetic at everything except magically mantaining their monopoly of professional network but I believe it is far more valuable than it is now.

I am not sure what has held LinkedIn back these many years but it is certainly possible that the new leadership can push a lot of great changes to the platform.

Took the words out of my mouth.

As someone else pointed out, their revenue is pretty decent. But their biggest asset is likely key staff as well as, as social networks go, that it has the cleanest/most useful database of users.

There are far cheaper ways of getting LinkedIn's database!

SQL Injection?

LinkedIn is doing well man. Why Microsoft did this is another question.

Because they already own the "Office". They want you to integrate your Outlook\Exchange with Linked in.