Darkness at Noon, by Arthur Koestler, is another allegorical book about the Russian Revolution, more specifically the Moscow trials that followed. The book had a strong impact on me.
This article makes a lot of good points about the acquisition of LinkedIn. Such as, the ultimate play of LinkedIn user integration into the Microsoft suite as the billion dollar idea for Micrsoft. However, near the end, the author points our a painfully obvious contradiction of his knowledge on Linkedin by saying, "there is no transparency as to how LinkedIn's revenue has grown..." While I understand the Facebook comparison, I believe it to be a little off base. LinkedIn has two distinct business lines, advertising (like Facebook) and a B2B recruiting software platform.
On the advertising front, I could not agree more with the article. Working in the B2B marketing space for a while, we completely cut LinkedIn ads due to poor reach of our defined target audience. Working in the fintech space, we targeted the appropriate persona, yet came away with hundreds of likes from irrelevant professions. Coupled with the price, we left almost immediately.
However, I believe that LinkedIn is expanding on a B2B play. Selling recruiting solutions. LinkedIn is calling them "Talent Solutions." In October, LinkedIn purchased Glint, based out of the bay area [1]. Glint focuses primarily on B2B HR solutions, using surveys and AI to comprehend employee engagement and satisfaction. With LinkedIn's talent solution + Glint's HR solution, LinkedIn, and Microsoft, is making a horizontal play onto the HR landscape.