Microsoft-LinkedIn: Peeling off the headlines

USA: So yes it's out. And about.

The biggest acquisition in its history, a war-chest of some $26 billion, and timing it right as Apple pulls out new rabbits out of the WWDC hat!

The news has stayed in the air for all its weight, surprise and speculations.

Microsoft now finds itself in an interesting spot and industry watchers are ready to gaze at the mega-deal under the microscope as they put their special gloves on. The Microsoft-LinkedIn deal!

There are questions flitting about the actual agenda and reasons, about data-mining prospects, about the financial worth of the deal, about weaving it in with Microsoft-ware, about finally spinning money-making possibilities with the network, about machine learning and bot-place meshing with the workplace, about LinkedIn and Office 365-Cortana engagement, about imperialistic-hangovers of the past, Cortana's ears inside your head affecting your career, the networking site's attraction as a content platform and more.

The top-most questions surround the tough road ahead around integration once the dust around the money part settles down.

Whether LinkedIn was worth the buck or not specially after its dwindling advertising business and growth graph (note that Research firm eMarketer pegged U.S. digital ad revenue dip from 35 percent growth in 2015 to less than 10 percent growth this year); is just a question to start with. May be it swings the other way when one thinks of the hawt data crunching algorithms or the massive 433 million members' profiles that come along.

But, What we need to end with is the bigger picture from here on - something that is not limited to just Microsoft's product kitty but affects professionals, privacy and future of workplace as we know it.

Would Microsoft have a deeper hand and eye in the way we work from now on, given that Excel, Word, Office etc are already part of our cubicle?

Would this mean the arrival of a new Cloud - the office Cloud that harbors everything, and every detail about one's work-related dimensions?

Would this mean that individual privacy be at stake in a scarier way, now that so much data is under new wings and hungry to be monetised?

Dan Bieler, Principal Analyst at Forrester flings another door open.

Bieler fears that LinkedIn's status of trusted independent platform for professional information exchange could be undermined.

"Although the deal, should it go through, helps Microsoft to strengthen its social networking services and professional content, there will be LinkedIn users that are not keen to become sucked into the Microsoft ecosystem as part of their social collaboration activities."

Another part to pay attention to is the mobile landscape where Microsoft must redouble its mobile efforts. For a large part of LinkedIn's activities are mobile based and Microsoft's weak position in mobile ecosystems could dramatically undermine LinkedIn's longer-term opportunities, Bieler warns.

If we consider Jeffrey Hammond's reasoning here, this VP, Principal Analyst at Forrester reckons that the deal puts Microsoft in better position to compete with other Digital Platform independent software vendors (ISVs) like Salesforce, Facebook and Amazon, by combining LinkedIn's extensive business focused social graph with products from Microsoft’s Office, Dynamics and Azure teams.

"It adds a valuable source of community and connection to Microsoft’s Digital Application Platform."

What Melissa Parrish, VP, Principal Analyst at Forrester suggests it that if Microsoft fully integrates everything from LinkedIn’s feature-set to the data, social media in the workplace will become so much more than a quick way to chat with a colleague or collaborate on a doc.

"It’ll be pivotal for recruiting and retention; it’ll change the way companies think about employee, prospect, and customer privacy; and it will potentially be a game changer for B2B marketing and social selling."

There are other 'if-s' in the air meanwhile.

Like if LinkedIn's reputation around spam and password-security can be tackled well?

Or- Like what if there's a Skype or a Yammer moment again?

Bieler recommends that Microsoft must be much faster to decide on LinkedIn's strategy than it did with Skype. A reminder, although an unpleasant one, fits in well. "It took Microsoft five years to define its strategy for Skype (and Yammer for that matter). This slow response to sort out Skype's place in the Microsoft family slowed down Skype's momentum significantly. By the time the new Skype strategy was announced, most of the hardcore Skype users had migrated away towards other social collaboration platforms."

If Microsoft underestimates the mobile dimension for LinkedIn, the future for LinkedIn could be very questionable. When users are fickle and there is no loyalty to outdated social media platform, there is a lot that stays to be linked.

The collars may have already turned into a new stripe.