In June, Microsoft purchased LinkedIn for $26.2 billion, sending ripples right through the business world.
Now, social media is waiting for the shockwaves of the American giant’s acquisition to arrive.
Should we expect to see change in Linkedin?
With this amount of investment taking place, there will doubtless be some long term goals for the site. Many think Microsoft are trying to reclaim lost ground for less successful product launches, but the obvious answer may lie with LinkedIn’s great strength: the huge amount of data collected from business owners. The fact that the platform collects and endorses business owners for their skills and expertise makes this a very viable environment for future monetisation.
How could Microsoft monetise Linkedin?
We could see a revamp of the ad system, and perhaps certain paid areas may spring up on the site. We could see a higher cost to advertise on the site, but perhaps with a wider ability to target outside of the system in some way. This is, of course, all guess work at this stage.
Looking at a company and their previous dealings can often offer clues, and it’s hard to see past some of Microsoft’s recent failures – such as the much-maligned Windows phone, which has trailed behind the iPhone and Android phones for years. Can the acquisition of LinkedIn help change the software giant’s fortunes around?
LinkedIn, although still a social media platform, targets business owners in such a way as to make it completely unique and any changes will rock the boat. With social media giants, such as Facebook, changes happen all the time and they get rolled out as the user interacts on the site. Quite often this is seen as an annoyance, but the user almost expects it and carries on using the platform. With LinkedIn this might not be the case, as the site is seen as a far more serious business related platform, and is used in the main to form connections with other business owners in your market. Changes here may have to be introduced in a slightly different way, but what these will be remains to be seen.
