LinkedIn Rolls Out New Technology
September 22 2016 - 4:13PM
Dow Jones News
By Jay Greene
SAN FRANCISCO -- LinkedIn Corp. rolled out new technology and
products Thursday to keep members on its network longer, a move
that could help generate more data and make it more valuable to
Microsoft Corp.
LinkedIn, which agreed to sell itself for $26.2 billion to
Microsoft in June, debuted training, messaging and news feed
features designed to keep LinkedIn's 450 million members using the
social network more often and longer. If successful, members will
be more likely to keep their profiles up-to-date, add new
connections, and post items that offer insight into their work
interests.
"There's a flywheel there," LinkedIn CEO Jeff Weiner said in an
interview. "The more we understand who you are..., the more
personal an experience we can create."
One feature is LinkedIn Learning, training videos to help
professionals learn new skills, such as computer coding, for their
careers. That technology comes from LinkedIn's $1.5 billion
acquisition in April 2015 of online learning site lynda.com.
The company said it also refined its news feed so to give
greater priority to posts that are more timely and relevant to
members, using criteria such as their employer, their industry and
job title, and the city where they work, rather than just the
latest item that one of their connections posts.
LinkedIn also introduced improved messaging features that work
inside the desktop version of the website to help workers more
quickly connect with other members who might help them land new
jobs.
LinkedIn showed little integration with Microsoft products
during its presentation. That is because the new products and
services it rolled out were already in development when the
acquisition was announced, Mr. Weiner said. But LinkedIn will
"prioritize" weaving those offerings into Microsoft's technology
going forward, he added.
"That planning is happening," Mr. Weiner said.
The new features provide LinkedIn with more data about each
member -- a key reason why Microsoft agreed to buy LinkedIn. That
data, for example, could augment Microsoft's customer-relationship
management offerings to give sales representatives better access to
prospects and more insight into the executives to whom they are
making pitches.
The messaging service, for example, was developed to schedule
appointments with Alphabet Inc.'s Google Calendar. It used a
personal assistant bot, created by LinkedIn, to schedule
appointments that work with connections, and find a nearby location
for the meeting.
Microsoft is developing its own bot technology, using its
Cortana personal assistant, technology that Mr. Weiner expects
LinkedIn engineers to tap.
"That can accelerate what we're doing," Mr. Weiner said.
Write to Jay Greene at Jay.Greene@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
September 22, 2016 15:58 ET (19:58 GMT)
Copyright (c) 2016 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
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