On April 9, 2015 LinkedIn acquired Lynda.com, an extensive library of premium video content. With such an acquisition, business-oriented social networking service LinkedIn expands to education and hopes to gain and retain members.
- What is Lynda.com?
Lynda is an online education platform that offers content on a variety of topics such as business, design, photography or web development. Whether a single individual or a company, you can access the content you need to boost your own skills or your employees’ through video tutorials and training in multiple languages. As founder Lynda Weinman likes to describe it, Lynda is “an online library of instructional videos” that has been adopted by many organizations such as academic institutions, corporations and government agencies.
- What makes Lynda.com different?
Lynda.com is a pioneer in its field as it was founded in 1995 and has been successful ever since. Unlike many online learning companies, Lynda is a paying service but it is recognized for the expertise of its teachers and high level quality content.
- What are LinkedIn’s motives for acquiring Lynda.com?
Why would the leading professional social network LinkedIn spend $1.5 billion on acquiring Lynda.com, you may ask? As of now, LinkedIn helps about 350 million members find a job, build a business and more generally be more successful in their careers.
“LinkedIn’s fundamental value proposition is connecting people to opportunity”, says CEO Jeff Weiner. The idea is to provide members with effective solutions for building skill sets that they need in their current or future positions. Let’s say you look at an interesting job ad and find a list of skills required for the position, you will be able to build up these skills through subscription-based service Lynda.
As education is closely related to the job market, LinkedIn aims at attracting more students, young graduates and professionals eager to learn and improve. With this acquisition, LinkedIn hope to retain their members on the platform with education and interactive content.
Author: Chloé Delolme
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