LinkedIn's $1.5 Billion Lynda.com Purchase Is All About the Data

LinkedIn has acquired online education company Lynda.com for approximately $1.5 billion, the company announced today. The acquisition is LinkedIn's biggest ever and gives the company a wealth of instructional videos on topics such as web development, photography and design. LinkedIn plans to promote these courses to its 350 million users, and the company's brass is already theorizing about how LinkedIn's wealth of corporate data can be used to suggest relevant classes. Here's one such hypothetical from LinkedIn content head Ryan Roslansky: Imagine being a job seeker and being able to instantly know what skills are needed for the available jobs in a desired city, like Denver, and then to be prompted to take the relevant and accredited course to help you acquire this skill. From a data standpoint, that's intriguing. But it may only be the start. As long as we're imagining, consider the following two potential applications of Lynda data within LinkedIn's core product: LinkedIn is saying this acquisition is about "connecting people to opportunity." That may be true, but it also strengthens the company's data arsenal significantly, a smart move in today's data-driven digital economy.

LinkedIn's $1.5 Billion Lynda.com Purchase Is All About the Data

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