The Microsoft Acquisition  Welcome to episode 118 of the LinkedInformed podcast at the end of a truly historic week for LinkedIn. As you would expect I am going to concentrate all of this episode on evaluating Microsoft's acquisition of LinkedIn. Advantages for Microsoft Entry into the social media space. An area they have neglected to get involved with previously which was beginning to look like a serious weakness. An opportunity to increase sales of Office 365 via extensive integration with LinkedIn’s functionality. Dynamics (Their CRM solution) will benefit the most from this acquisition and potentially allow it to become the market leader (currently Salesforce). Content from LinkedIn publishing allowing greater advertising opportunities. Big data. Rich information about people and their online behaviour. Advantages for LinkedIn $26 billion! Greater resources to enable new products such as Profinder to be launched and rapidly expanded. $26 billion! Use of Microsoft’s massive cloud infrastructure. A way out of their stock-based compensation conundrum. $2.3 billion into Reid Hoffman’s bank account! Advantages for Members I expect the under-resourced help centre to improve significantly Skype integration Integration with Outlook 365 & Dynamics. Better distribution of published posts Disadvantages for Members Less Google optimisation Another secretive ‘closed’ culture Focus on corporates at the expense of SMB’s And …..