I remember it like it was yesterday: LinkedIn announced its agreement to acquire online learning company Lynda.com on April 9, 2015, with the deal officially closing on May 14, 2015. The acquisition was valued at approximately $1.5 billion and involved a combination of cash and stock.
If you are reading this Sunday Blog, there is a very good chance that you are active on LinkedIn. I am not sure that we should classify LinkedIn as Social Media. I was one of the first 100,000 users on LinkedIn way back in the day. Somewhere in my office is a letter from Reid Hoffman when they hit their first 100K+ users thanking me (and the other 99,999 of us) for our support. I remember back then I thought that LinkedIn would be valuable if (and only if) I was looking for a job. Ok, this concept is cool, a professional network in the clouds. I am not sure if I will ever use it, because I (was) self-employed. Hey, it's free, might as well keep the account active.
When LinkedIn acquired Lynda.com for $1B+ I thought that was crazy money. When Microsoft acquired LinkedIn for $26B+ I thought that was crazy money. Turns out that really smart people knew exactly what they were doing. The vision and mission of Microsoft was pure. The LinkedIn acquisition is now viewed as one of the best business deals of the past ten years. Maybe the past hundred years.
For me, I still use the (free) version of LinkedIn. And every day (every single day) I connect with at least 10 new people. Some days 20, some days over 30. But there has not been a day in the past year that I have not met at least 10 amazing professionals thanks to LinkedIn.
Or is it thanks to Microsoft?
TomCapone.com goes to my personal LinkedIn account. Let's connect and THRIVE in the GLOBAL Cloud COMMUNITY. Yours and mine.
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