Microsoft and LinkedIn

Twit podcast on the motivations of Microsoft acquiring Linkedin.  Useful thought piece.  Mention of Office Graph.  Privacy implications.   Continuing to follow.  Emphasis on a social channel with much less noise.   Value of real networking connections.    Also they get skill delivery group Lynda.com with the purchase.

(Update)  The three journalists that did this podcast provided good insight.  Implications with connections to Skype.   But I note that of the three, none of them were active users of LinkedIn.   Also mention of  Internal company functionality we had looked at.    Will this encourage those efforts?

Microsoft Buying Linkedin

An interesting play, for a mere 26 Billion dollars.  I was involved with looking at Linkedin as an enterprise package for sharing internal connections and expertise.  Can we expect to see this pushed by Microsoft, hopefully cleanly integrated with systems like Skype?  

In particular how the architecture used by a company like Linkedin can be used securely and at scale, for connections to both internal and external sources of expertise.   Does it have this value?   It comes pre-loaded with a large percentage of focused global professionals. Imagine the possibilities for service based applications.    More.

(Update)   I was reminded of Microsoft's Office Graph,  and here in PCWorld. which has similar purpose.  And could be well driven by the Linkedin knowledge.    Also Cortana, which should also be intelligently interconnected,  I hope they do a better job than they have done with Skype integration.

Also,  How LinkedIn failed, Why it's better off inside Microsoft  By Casey Newton