LinkedIn to Buy Pulse Newsreader for More than $50M
LinkedIn will buy San Francisco-based newsreader appmaker Pulse, according to sources familiar with the negotiations. — The price of the acquisition is in the tens of millions, they said — between $50 million to $100 million.
Context & Ripple Effects
The reported negotiations follow LinkedIn's 2012 shift toward an engagement-focused service and a February 2013 refresh of its jobs product’s discovery features. With 200 million users worldwide, the company has a large professional audience to which a content product could be distributed.
The talks also align with a reported ambition to emphasize business content and professional publishing rather than operate chiefly as a social network. That strategic direction remains unconfirmed, as does the Pulse transaction.
First-order effects
- If completed, the reported $50 million-to-$100 million purchase would bring Pulse’s newsreader product and team inside LinkedIn, adding a content-consumption product alongside its career-focused services.
- Pulse would move from a standalone appmaker to a product serving LinkedIn’s professional user base.
Second-order effects
- LinkedIn could use its existing member base to distribute business news and professional content, making repeat reading activity a more central source of engagement than job searches alone.
- Publishers and content creators seeking professional audiences would gain a potentially important distribution channel, while LinkedIn would have greater control over how that audience discovers material.
Third-order effects
- If LinkedIn follows through on its reported publishing focus, professional networks may increasingly compete on the quality and frequency of content engagement, not only on profiles, connections, and recruiting tools.
The trend: The reported Pulse talks are one data point in LinkedIn’s move toward making professional identity a gateway to recurring content consumption.