LinkedIn To Buy News Reader Pulse For £59m

LinkedIn has announced plans to acquire Pulse, a news reader and mobile content distribution platform founded by two graduates from Stanford University.

The professional social network will pay around $90 million (£58.6m) for Pulse, which was founded in 2010 by Akshay Kothari and Ankit Gupta while they were still students, in a combination of 90 percent stock and 10 percent cash.

“We are thrilled to be able to add Pulse’s considerable talent, technology, and products to our growing ecosystem of content offerings, and we believe that they will help us accelerate our ability to deliver to our members the insights they need to be better at what they do, on any device,” said Deep Nishar, senior vice president of Products and User Experience at LinkedIn. “To continue to deliver that value to our members, our vision for content is that LinkedIn will be the definitive professional publishing platform, and Pulse is a perfect complement to this vision.”

Finger on the pulse

Pulse’s iOS and Android applications currently has more than 30 million users across 190 countries and are available in nine different languages. Around 40 percent of its user base is located outside the US, while 750 of the world’s leading publishers distribute their content through the platform.

“Over the past three years, Pulse has established itself as a key part of that conversation; it has grown from a small project, to a platform for millions of readers to access their favorite content,” said Kothari.

The transaction is subject to customary closing conditions and is expected to be concluded in the second half of 2013. Following the acquisition, Pulse will be closed with members of its team joining LinkedIn at its Mountain View headquarters in California.

Exiting Pulse apps will continue to be supported as the new combined team build future products using the technology. LinkedIn currently has more than 200 million members and recently reported quarterly profits of £25.5 million – more than double expections.

“Now that our team is part of LinkedIn, we’ll work together to expand the possibilities for content discovery, helping readers engage in conversations with colleagues, mentors, industry leaders, and beyond,” said Gupta.

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