Source: Yes, LinkedIn and News Corp. are working on a deal
A rumor surfaced last week, in Techcrunch UK, that News Corp. is looking at buying business networking site LinkedIn. — A well-placed source has confirmed with us that these talks are serious. LinkedIn has declined to comment.
Context & Ripple Effects
TechCrunch UK floated the News Corp–LinkedIn rumor just under a week ago (first reported November 22), and VentureBeat now reports a well-placed source calling the talks serious — an escalation from whisper to sourced confirmation, even though LinkedIn itself has declined to comment. It lands amid a cluster of unconfirmed News Corp deal chatter from the same week, including resurfaced rumors about a renewed run at Digg that could also sweep in Revision3.
The backdrop matters: LinkedIn joined Google's OpenSocial alliance at the end of October, positioning itself as an open platform rather than a walled garden, while commentary earlier in November argued Facebook had not displaced it in business networking. A sale to News Corp — owner of MySpace and already circling multiple social properties — would test whether a professional network can live inside a consumer-media conglomerate.
First-order effects
- If the talks proceed, LinkedIn's corporate recruiting customers and its developer partners in the OpenSocial coalition face an ownership change to a company whose flagship network, MySpace, competes in the same broad social space.
- LinkedIn's silence leaves the rumor cycle running on unnamed sources, putting pressure on both companies to either confirm or kill the story before it shapes perceptions of LinkedIn's independence.
Second-order effects
- Other suitors for professional networking — and rivals watching News Corp accumulate social assets alongside the rumored Digg and Revision3 plays — would have to price their own moves against a possible News Corp-owned LinkedIn.
- Facebook's encroachment on business use cases gets a new variable: a LinkedIn inside a media conglomerate might push harder on platform features, or stall under integration priorities, changing the calculus for developers choosing which professional graph to build on.
Third-order effects
- The pattern points toward social networks consolidating into large media and portal acquirers, with the professional graph treated as a strategic asset rather than an independent category.
- Whether an open-platform strategy like OpenSocial survives absorption into a conglomerate becomes a test case for how much autonomy acquired networks keep — an open question this deal, if real, would force the industry to answer.
The trend: Social networking assets are being drawn into consolidation by big media acquirers, with News Corp simultaneously linked to LinkedIn, Digg, and Revision3 as it builds out a portfolio beyond MySpace.