LinkedIn Acquires SlideShare for $119 Million

Sites include LinkedIn.com , SlideShare.net . Published on May 20th, 2012. Written by Anthony West.

Presentations are a big part of business and networking so LinkedIn’s acquisition of SlideShare comes as no real surprise. Since going public there has been a lot of expectation for LinkedIn to deliver solid results and many are calling the acquisition very good news for investors.

The cost to acquire SlideShare rings in at a hefty $119 million but analysts believe that the valuation is sound and nothing like the inflated $1 billion paid by Facebook to acquire Instagram recently.

With this new tool added to the LinkedIn portfolio, the professional social network platform can now offer online collaboration and presentation tools to its millions of users. What’s even better is that the integration can be completed given users access to the tool in a handy cloud-based environment.

The acquisition also brings with it some oomph for LinkedIn because SlideShare is no slouch. Since launch back in 2008, SlideShare has built up a user base of millions which translates into 29 million monthly uniques each month. The site currently hosts over 9 million presentations with embeds on over 1.4 million domains. Put it simply, LinkedIn will now be able to tap into a wide pool of users and perhaps even add to its growing pool of 161 million members.

Do you use SlideShare to store your presentations? Let us know using the comments below.