LinkedIn in talks to purchase Pulse News app
LinkedIn is reportedly in talks to buy popular news aggregator app Pulse News Reader. According to AllThingsD, LinkedIn will close the purchase of...
LinkedIn is reportedly in talks to buy popular news aggregator app, Pulse News. According to AllThingsD, LinkedIn will close the purchase of the startup somewhere between $50 and $100 million. It was also revealed that LinkedIn is competing against heavyweights Yahoo and Microsoft to buy Pulse. Microsoft had earlier partnered with Pulse on a mobile web app, making it a strong contender as well.
Keeping an eye on LinkedIn's Pulse
The report cited "sources" saying that the deal was nearly complete and would be announced this week, even though several more weeks may pass until it is closed.
Pulse is a pretty popular news reading app directly in competition with the likes of Flipboard and Summly. The app provides news content from a wide variety of publications like BBC, The New Yorker, TMZ and NBC News.
More from News AnalysisThe app has a strong backing of 20 million readers who browse through more than 10 million stories per day, which is primarily what Pulse will be bringing to the table. LinkedIn could be vying not just the large user base, but also the wide range of platforms the app covers.
San Francisco-based Alphonso Labs, which has developed Pulse, has raised about $10 million from Redpoint Ventures, Greycroft Partners, Mayfield Fund, Lightspeed Investment Partners, New Enterprise Associates and Lerer Ventures.
Going beyond just news services, Pulse also integrates personalised social feeds from sites like YouTube, Tumblr, Flickr, Facebook and Instagram. Pulse previously used to offer cumulative top social feeds from Instagram, YouTube, Readability and even Reddit, and allows you to personalise feeds to draw in users further.
Pulse users can simply sign-in to their Flickr, YouTube, Instagram, Tumblr and Facebook accounts to create a one-stop destination to see content from all their social networking websites, along with the news. The content is formatted and there are also new story views for images and videos.
LinkedIn, on the other hand, is going places and reaching the 200 million user landmark seems to have boosted the social network’s confidence. It recently rolled out quite a lot of improvements to its previously sluggish apps, and has even gone shopping for networks like SlideShare and CardMunch. It won’t be surprising to see LinkedIn adding Pulse to its repertoire.
Intrigued by all things social, Nishtha will invariably tweet about you. When not tweeting or writing about the next viral video, you will hear her proclaiming her love to Metallica, James Hetfield, Opeth, Akerfeldt and all bands that go 'growl'. She also obsesses about ACP Pradyuman and South Park and you will always find her moving around with a book. Her focus is on all the happening stuff in the tech domain, and she won't hesitate to take a shot at some of the oddball devices that make their way to our labs.
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