LinkedIn to Buy Lynda.com – Online Education Site
LinkedIn, the world’s largest professional network thriving on the internet with over than 300 million members worldwide has made its debut in the professional education market to a great extent. As we all know LinkedIn established itself as a professional social network where you can look for – who has been hired, who is searching for job vacancies, regular profile updates by people, whom you are connected to, all the professional skills you’ve acquired.
All these tremendous data about a person can offer them great insights for various companies and this is what makes LinkedIn an extremely valuable company. The social company bought Lynda.com, the privately held online education company founded by Technical books author Lynda Weinman and co-founder Bruce Heavin Based in Capenteria, CA.
Lynda.com has been the favorite choice of people for online learning on subjects like Photoshop and other various computer languages like basic HTML, C++ , CSS and many more providing video tutorials from industry experts and vets long before the concept of e-learning attracted people as now it does today in a great way. The training space has a lot of players, such as DevelopIntelligence, OpenSesame, Udemy, and more. So this is an interesting deal to review for many.
The asset is priced at $1.5 billion in total that combines 48% stock and 52% cash payout, subject to completion of customary conditions, with an expected closing date in the second quarter of this year. According to the release most of the employees of Lynda.com will join LinkedIn as a part of this contract.
LinkedIn CEO Jeff Weiner talks about how this contract will change the face of his company moving one step closer towards their goal of connecting job seekers with their jobs with this professional network by providing with more fair access to education and skill.
CEO Weinman described this duo as a “perfect cultural fit that benefits everyone” and discussed that how it will help them improvise on the skill gap in the market where people could enroll for various courses and education programs online. Ryan Rolansky, head of products at LinkedIn says that this will change the future of professional networks, where people are made aware of the required skills for the positions they are applying and also take specific courses to acquire those skills through the social network.
This deal has been highly strategic by LinkedIn focusing on their economic growth LinkedIn didn’t exactly disclosed about their future plans for education resource, but Rolansky did say that Lynda.com will remain open for business and is still accessible by users for they are working on it together.
