LinkedIn acquired by Microsoft for a whopping $26.1 billion. But why?
LinkedIn is essentially the Facebook of the business world, and the digital repository of most of the world’s resumes. LinkedIn has roughly 100 million members in Europe of a total of 450 million. Very few people lie on their public view-able and controllable resume. And that’s information Microsoft is willing to pay for.
What will the use the data for?
Well Microsoft already knows a lot about you. They have your calendar (Outlook), your meetings (Outlook) and your accounts (Microsoft Dynamics CRM). By buying LinkedIn Microsoft gains even more data to feed into its machine learning and business intelligence processes. Some think to feed Cortana so the start of a business meeting may loook like this:
Right now, Cortana provides some basic information about your calendar, suggesting, for example, what time you’ll need to leave to arrive at your next meeting on time. In Microsoft’s digital future, Cortana will be able to sum up what you need to know about your business relationship, and what information you can use to cement a more personal connection, too.