News Corp May Be Looking To Buy LinkedIn

Linked in is for the - over 35 - middle level manager, or seasoned professional.
It appears that Facebook is for slightly younger crow, perhaps late teens, 20s and 30s.

News Corp would probably be a more relevant firm. Seeing the direction they are now going into with the Wall St Journal - and his consideration for bidding on the New York Times.

They are obviously seeking a more mature, professional, well education audience.

Perhaps they will also attempt to influence them politically - they would have more success than with the Facebook crowd

its a Good Match . Big Pay DAY Ahead for Hoffman

It will be great when newscorp own everything….Imagine the content they will be able to deliver us….

Linked In is for your professional life, Facebook is for farting around on with your friends. Whilst I have some colleagues and customers/partners/suppliers on Facebook, it’s only the very very close ones. It is good that there is no central social networking site to rule them all. From where I sit, I see increased fragmentation of social networking now - soon every company will have them whether they will be internal or partly (or totally) external will differ from company to company. Linked In is great as a professional life social network generalist.

Hmmm… If LinkedIn was for sale, why is Yahoo! still sitting quiet. They have tried in the past to acquire them… is that News Corp is paying a premium to buy LinkedIn??

Better late than never for acquring web 2.0 business.

http://tekno-world.blogspot.com

Makes sense to me….

I bet this is a good purchase.. money make money..

It’s better to acquire asap rather than buying it later like digg.com..

I guess that these company are pretty cash rich..

no way i’m leaving my profile on linkedin if murdock buys it. i know it doesn’t make a difference but it’s a question of principle. i already don’t watch fox, read the wsj, subscribe to directv, so im sure i can give up on linkedin

I won’t be surprise to see Newscorp wanting to buy TechCrunch

I can’t wait for the anti-trust case at the doj to follow this if more acquisitions of this nature ensue.

Watch out for this http://www.webguild.org/user/l.....yspace.php

Whats the plan of News Corp? I mean why do they want to buy these social networks? Is this part of their long term plan or just want to ride the web wave?

I’m with you Ju. If Murdock buys it I’ll just leave.

I’ll agree with that as well - no way I”m leaving my info on a site owned by Murdoch and his agendas.

> no way i’m leaving my profile on linkedin if murdock buys it.

Agree because murdock is a untrustworthy megalomaniac

SalesForce would be a better match.

There’s always Plaxo if LinkedIn goes down hill. Stop the spam and I’d switch.

Getting hold of a database, with personal contacts, questions and all sorts of personal info in the hands of Muderock ….. not good. Looks like Ning and the like have just had a big bonus if this story pans out.

News Corp really can’t afford to have FB buy it, plus we’ve been seeing a bunch of MySpace Hypertargeting ads appear on LinkedIn over the last few days, so this ties together pretty well.

This would be a good fit, not as good as MSNews but good

Me too. I am done with LinkedIn if it is under his umbrella. Looks like there will be a vacuum to fill as I predict a mass exodus.

Mass exodus? Provided the experience doesn’t change for the worse, only those with biased agendas of their own actually care who owns the service. A good network will continue to be just that.

if they sell, than there were not possible to do a proper IPO.

Maybe some News Corp $ will improve LinkedIn? Probably not though since it didn’t help Myspace.

I left LinkedIn the moment they started charging for networking. Very Web 1.0’ish. Now this is more reason for not going back. In fact, it is a perfect time for site like NetHooks to rise up and take charge. I started using them last week and looks like they have a good shot.

Personally Facebook can’t and will not get into professional networking. Their search functionality is not setup for professional networking. I mean, on Facebook you can only connect with other who are within your network. They should just stay social.

With Fox Business and the Wall Street Journal, owning LinkedIn makes a ton of sense.

I can’t stand Murdoch’s politics either, but try and name any big media conglomerate that is run by a big cuddly bear. I don’t see Murdoch going through each profile looking for subversive left-wing sentiments and then reaching for the bat phone to call the CIA.

Yahoo! is one of those companies that has a fairly liberal aura, but that didn’t stop them from facilitating human rights abuses in China.

One Linked In user must be worth about 1000 myspace users.

At least the Linked In audience is worth something. Great match with the WSJ acquisition.

Way to go, Rupert.

Rupert seems to recognize value when he sees it. Does anyone blame him for buying myspace for $500m+ now that Facebook has a $15bn valuation?

My guess is they pay between $600M - $1B for LinkedIn.

I’m with the others who would leave if Murdoch’s company acquires LinkedIn.

It was an easier decision to leave MySpace when they took over, it will be a bummer to leave a site like LinkedIn with the professional contacts I get for my business. But I can’t in good conscience stay with a site that is owned by a corporation I completely loathe.

I’m not convinced I see a fit here. CBS is a media conglomerate and LinkedIn is a business social network. Sure, there may be some overlap, but what’s the long-term strategy? In addition, I’m guessing that LinkedIn will be looking for a RIDICULOUS amount of money, especially with the recent Microsoft funding of Facebook at a $15 billion valuation…

Cheers,
Aidan Henry
http://www.MappingTheWeb.com

Why Rupert “antichrist” murdoch is trying to byu linkedin? Just to know everything about our lives?

Interesting. I have no idea if the rumor is true, but, in general, it does make sense for big players to be looking at the companies with leadership positions in the who-you-know space. Facebook is now too expensive for almost anyone to acquire. And both LinkedIn and Plaxo are quite interesting. More of my analyis here: http://therealmccrea.wordpress.....5-billion/

XING is better anyway.

It would be a wise move by news corp.

Facebook is better anyways.
Even if facebook is for friends and LinkedIn being for professionals, I still will prefer facebook.

Linkedin is better for getting reunited with friends rather beneficial for anything else that I observed.

Rupert Murdoch is the sharpest Old Media Pioneer around - and his moves so far inside New Media have also been very successful.

Linkedin could be the first Web 2.0 Company that uses a business model that does not entirely rely on Web Advertising. ( Although Blue Chip Brands would be very keen on placing Ads amongst affluent professionals.)

Successful Niche Social Networks will always have a high value, especially as folks that use these sites will always use their real online profile.
There are so many ‘Fake Profiles’ on sites like MySpace, Bebo and even Facebook, which is becoming a Web Advertisers nightmare.
What do you sell to the following Profiles like ‘GOD’, ‘JFK’, ‘MALCOLM X’, etc.

Over the long term I guarantee that a site like Linkedin will earn more annual revenues then sites like MySpace and Facebook - because they will deal in real people.

No matter what Companies Rupert Murdoch runs in both the Old and New Media World’s, he always uses the same mantra, ‘Content is King’.

Rock on Rupert!

Linkedin is nothing more then a feasting ground for recruiters. The problem with the site is that its starting to canobolize (sp) itself. Initially it was great for keeping in contact with folks but now the recruiters on the site are digging and digging and keep calling my contacts and myself with garbage opportunities. I am not sure if they can make enough money with ad space either. Personally, I am over this whole social networking stuff. Its too hard to maintain and I have my good contacts on my cell. I know, I know, I’m a grump.

LinkedIn has been great for networking in the internet marketing world. I get contacted all the time through it. I wish I used it more to do business development. Like anything its time consuming…great if they did buy it, they could take it to the next level..

I wonder what this does to the valuation of some of the smaller, private professional network sites. Frankly there’s not a lot of competition in this space. Plaxo is slowly turning the corner. I also like http://www.lyro.com too.

Dear TechCrunch writers -

Thank you for the valuable and insightful work that you do. Now can you all please get together and understand that pluralizing words does not involve adding an apostrophe before the ’s’. Example from this article: it’s “commenters”, not “commenter’s”. I see this mistake made over and over on TC. Don’t let your vast and highly educated readership turn into spelling retards. Thanks.

Duncan, LinkedIn now has 16 million members…

http://uk.techcrunch.com/2007/.....-linkedin/

I have heard from a high ranking News Corp insider that the next News Corp purchase my be UrTone. They say it’s going to be bigger that Jamba, it is a wireless platform with custom ring tone technology never seen before and a patent app that ‘if granted’ will cause Apple’s iTunes ring tone offering a BIG problem, it will also offer the social networking to mobile phone technology, ads to mobile and already has deals with Warner Music and Universal. It’s next to be snapped up before it is well known and the price is hiked.

This whole mess with Facebook Beacon is going to make LinkedIn look a whole lot better, especially since it is managed by adults, not arrogant clueless 24-year old punk.