LinkedIn Corp, the professional networking site, is branching out yet again.
The site said on Thursday that it had agreed to buy Lynda.com Inc, an online learning company that teaches career skills, for about US$1.5 billion in cash and stock.
It is the biggest acquisition by LinkedIn in its 12-year history as it continues to expand beyond its core social network.
In the past, LinkedIn has said that users visit its site most often to update their resumes when they are looking for a new job. The company earns most of its revenue from subscriptions to its premium services and advertising on its site, generating US$2.2 billion in sales last year.
However, the company has labored to become more than just an online repository for resumes and job histories. For instance, in 2012, LinkedIn began soliciting influential business personalities like Richard Branson, founder of the Virgin Group, to write original content for the site.
The company hired Dan Roth, a former editor at Fortune magazine, to be LinkedIn’s executive editor. Last year, the company introduced blogging capabilities for LinkedIn’s users, essentially becoming an original content platform.
Two years ago, the company bought Pulse, the maker of a newsreader app, for US$90 million.
LinkedIn binds all those services into what it calls the economic graph, where users can connect to both new professional opportunities and the skills needed to take advantage of them.
However, e-learning and professional development services are entirely new categories for the company, and LinkedIn hopes they will be another way it can lure users back to using its site every week or even every day.
Founded 20 years ago as a place to learn Web design, Lynda.com focuses on a number of subjects, like management skills, programming and video. It sells subscriptions that start at US$25 a month.
The company collected more than US$150 million in revenue last year and has turned a profit since 1997.
“We’ve followed Lynda.com for a long time, rooted in the conviction that access to high-quality, skills-based learning and development content should be available to every LinkedIn member and a fundamental part of our platform,” LinkedIn chief executive Jeff Weiner wrote in a blog post.
Under the terms of the deal, about 52 percent of LinkedIn’s offer for Lynda.com will be in cash and the remainder in newly issued stock. The transaction is expected to close by the end of the second quarter.
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