In its biggest acquisition in its corporate history,
Microsoft bought social-network vendor LinkedIn today. But why?
The reason: It's all about the data.
The slightly longer version: For the potential synergies involving Microsoft's Office 365, Dynamics CRM/ERP and advertising products and services.
Microsoft's slide deck that outlines potential scenarios involving the two companies emphasizes that management view the deal as connecting the "world's leading professional cloud" and "the professional network."
Microsoft and LinkedIn have both been building out their respective graphs.
Microsoft's graph is a collection of information pertaining to entities like contacts, messages, calendar entries and documents. LinkedIn's graph centers around entity information regarding jobs, coworkers, learning, prospects and recruiting/hiring.
