

Pulse Joins the LinkedIn Family - pumpikano
http://blog.pulse.me/post/47721164686/pulse-joins-the-linkedin-family

======
bambax
I don't understand LinkedIn (anymore).

Their business model seems to be to source candidates to recruiters. This may
be good for recruiters, but for candidates? I'm not so sure. It's certainly
better to have an overall strong online presence (Twitter / Github (if
relevant) / personal blog) than contacts on LinkedIn that don't mean anything.

Groups are full of spam.

The website is incredibly unresponsive.

They bought the excellent IndexTank technology and team a while ago, and
promptly shut it down (the tech was open sourced though, which is more than
can be said for a lot of acquisitions).

It seems they only keep on living because people are somewhat afraid to delete
their profile; but everything inside LinkedIn feels dead.

And now Pulse. Who would go to LinkedIn for news??

Pulse says "The company shares (...) our belief in the power of knowledge and
elevated discussion".

Elevated discussion? On LinkedIn? Come on!

~~~
wallywax
The "LinkedIn is useless" meme that seems popular here really baffles me, to
be honest. Yes, there are many LinkedIn features that I don't get value from
(including the news feed and endorsements). But I've found it invaluable for
the one core feature it was built on: keeping in touch with your professional
contacts. I'm not going to add all my former co-workers, the interesting
people I talk to at conferences and counterparts at other companies on
Facebook. I don't care what their kids are doing, or where they went on
vacation. But I _do_ want to know if they move to some other interesting job,
find out if they're hiring or, most importantly, reach them in the future if I
would like their advice or help. With my LinkedIn network, if I ever want to
reach someone at Company X, whether it be to talk about a job opportunity or
to tell them their API is broken, all I have to do is search that company
name. Up comes a list of people at that company, and how connected I am to
them. If I don't know anyone who currently works there, I probably know
someone who does, and can get an introduction.

Before LinkedIn, I'd take business cards or exchange emails with contact
information. I'd try to remember to enter it into my addressbook, or file it
somewhere I can find it later. Good luck searching it, and if you do find
someone and they've moved to a new job, the contact info you have might be
totally out of date anyway.

It isn't just a hyped up resume. A great Github profile, blog or Twitter
account does little to replace LinkedIn's functionality. If you're looking at
it as just a way to be found by recruiters, you're doing it wrong. It's about
keeping in touch with a broad network of professional contacts. Not people I
talk to every day, but people I like, respect, and know I can reach out to if
I need help (and vice versa). Despite all the annoying things they do, I find
it extremely useful.

~~~
bambax
Upvoted. I really don't see myself using LinkedIn this way, but I understand
that you do.

(All my LinkedIn contacts are people I know personaly. When I need to contact
them I use my address book where I store their personal email address, and
mobile phone # which aren't on LinkedIn. If I need to contact someone I don't
know, I don't think about going through LinkedIn; maybe I should.)

------
GuiA
Congrats to the pulse founders for entering the millionaire club.

Sucks that they have to pretend to be excited about joining LinkedIn and
likely suffer there for a few years, but every rose has a thorn.

~~~
richiezc
My friends startup was acquired by LinkedIn, 2 year vesting period that is
heavily backloaded.

~~~
fourstar
Please elaborate. Backloaded? In terms of what?

~~~
fananta
In terms of cash. So they might get 10% up front and larger portions as they
near the end of the vesting period.

------
dm8
Apparently, LinkedIn paid them 90M -
[http://techcrunch.com/2013/04/11/linkedin-acquires-pulse-
for...](http://techcrunch.com/2013/04/11/linkedin-acquires-pulse-for-90m-in-
stock-and-cash/)

Wow. There are so many RSS readers but congrats to Pulse team on executing
well.

How it fits into LinkedIn's product roadmap?

------
SurfScore
I love Pulse. They built a great app and I'm really happy for them, so this
isn't a critique, but were they really worth 90M? I get that most of it was in
stock, but damn.

I guess it was more of a team/userbase acquisition, similar to the
Dropbox/Mailbox deal. Either way, congrats guys!

~~~
akavi
Isn't stock == cash when the acquiring company is public?

~~~
nuclear_eclipse
Assuming a vesting period, that implies much less liquidity from the deal, and
very much relies on the longterm value of the stock. IMO, stock later is worth
much less than cash now.

~~~
hkmurakami
For a company like Linkedin which has been on the market for a while, you can
buy a bunch of put options. It comes with a cost obviously, but it's a good
hedge for an all stock transaction.

IIRC this is what Mark Cuban did when he sold his company to Yahoo!

------
flipside
I'm optimistic because I love Pulse and Linkedin has definitely been pushing
into the news feed space so it makes a lot of sense.

Slightly concerned though because of what happened to CardMunch.

Either way, grats to the pulse team!

------
julien_c
Way to go Akshay Kothari!

------
socalnate1
I love Pulse, it's my favorite mobile news reader by far.

------
checken
I hope they do a better job with Pulse than they have with Rapportive

------
thecosas
Congrats to the pulse team. Also, dammit.

------
gingerbreadman
Great stuff from the pulse guys!

------
zachgalant
congrats, guys!

