Earlier this week, Microsoft completed their acquisition of LinkedIn – for an astounding amount of cash, making it the largest deal in their history. I have long been an advocate and supporter of the LinkedIn platform as MoreVisibility was a participant in the beta program years ago, to help launch LinkedIn's Company Pages.
Early on, so many businesses struggled to understand how social media could fit into their marketing strategy or plans, particularly B-to-B companies. From inception, LinkedIn has offered great networking, and more recently, content distribution and advertising options for these marketers.
Given this acquisition, it will be interesting to see what's next for each company. They can certainly leverage one other to help bolster their audiences and product engagement. Many speculate that the networking element of LinkedIn will be rolled into MS Outlook, which would make for a very powerful CRM style tool.
I'd also be curious to see if the LinkedIn advertising options are rolled into the existing MSN AdCenter network, given the struggles Microsoft has had there since the Yahoo partnership disbanded. The potential of remarketing and demographic targeting, expanded onto the MSN network but utilizing the LinkedIn data, would be very powerful.
Only time will tell how this $26 billion deal will pay off for the tech giant…
…I'll be watching.
