Coverage: LinkedIn buys Newsle

LinkedIn is moving quickly to build out its content. The latest move was purchasing Newsle, which allows you to receive alerts on people of your choice. While it might seem an odd fit, LinkedIn is working to become the platform of choice for those trying to brand themselves in business.

Sydney Ember had this story in The New York Times:

On Monday, the business-oriented networking service announced that it had acquired Newsle, a start-up that combs the Internet for new articles and blogs that mention a user’s friend, a professional contact or a public figure. The move is LinkedIn’s latest attempt to establish itself as more than just a digital résumé service. The terms of the deal were not disclosed.

“The combination of Newsle and LinkedIn is good news for professionals everywhere because it means even more relevant insights about the people they care about,” Ryan Roslansky, the head of content products at LinkedIn, said in a statement.

For LinkedIn, too, Newsle’s appeal is its technology. In a post on its blog, LinkedIn emphasized Newsle’s algorithms, which allow the company to provide relevant content quickly to its users.

TechCrunch’s Darrell Etherington said that everyone at Newsle will join the LinkedIn team:

Newsle’s entire team of engineers, including four employees will be heading to LinkedIn along with founders Jonah Varon and Axel Hansen. Newsle’s product scans the web to find blogs and articles that mention specific people and then return results including blog posts and articles from the web that are relevant to those connections. Notifications about new posts happen almost in real time, and the startup has put a lot of time and effort into building natural language processing and disambiguation algorithms to make sure it’s bringing back the right kind of content.

Newsle was founded in January of 2011 and has raised a total of $2.6 million from investors including Transmedia Capital and Draper Fisher Jurveston.

While the two companies say Newsle will continue to operate as a standalone product for now, it’s worth noting that with previous acquisition CardMunch, LinkedIn acquired the company and operated it separately for a few years before finally announcing it would shutter the standalone app this year.

Ian Sherr wrote for CNET that this is just the latest in social network combinations:

The acquisition is the latest among social networking companies, which have been spending big recently, particularly on advertising technology. Twitter, for example, last month bought TapCommerce, an advertising company that specializes in convincing consumers to reopen and use commerce apps (like eBay) already downloaded to their phones.

In LinkedIn’s case, its acquisitions have appeared to hue away from advertising efforts, and more toward bolstering various functions on its site. For example, in February, LinkedIn agreed to pay $120 million for Bright, a data-driven job search startup. The goal was to bolster LinkedIn’s job-search features. A few months later, LinkedIn released a new mobile app for job seekers, claiming more than 40 percent of users now look for jobs using their mobile devices.

Jing Cao wrote for Bloomberg that LinkedIn’s growth is slowing, so it needs to fight for more users:

LinkedIn has faced a slowdown in growth in recent quarters. To boost sales, the biggest professional-networking website has been working to bolster job-related services and has invested to expand its user base in China. The acquisition of Newsle will give Mountain View, California-based LinkedIn tools to provide its customers with better business knowledge, according to the company’s blog post.

“We both want to provide professional insights that make you better at what you do,” Ryan Roslansky, LinkedIn’s head of content products, said in the company’s post. “Knowing more about the people in your network –- like when they’re mentioned in the news –- can surface relevant insights that help you hit your next meeting with them out of the park.”

Newsle, based in San Francisco, said its investors and advisers include Lerer Ventures, SV Angel and Bloomberg Beta, the fund backed by Bloomberg LP, the parent of Bloomberg News.

Joseph Roualdes, a spokesman for LinkedIn, declined to disclose further details of the integration or terms of the deal.

LinkedIn shares rose 2 percent to $159.70 at the close in New York. The stock has declined 26 percent this year.

While investors might like the strategy today, it is obvious LinkedIn has a ways to go to earn back their confidence. LinkedIn has struggled to carve out its niche, but seems to have recently clarified its position and uses. It might be experiencing a bit of growing pains getting there, but the company seems to have a clear goal. And how many other social media sites can say that?