London (UK), April 2015 - LinkedIn has announced its acquisition of Lynda.com, an online learning company, for $1.5 billion. The acquisition is a combination of 52 percent cash and 48 percent stock, and is expected to be closed in the second quarter of 2015. A statement from the two companies says that -œmost- of the employees from Lynda.com will be joining LinkedIn.
In a statement on the company’s blog, Ryan Roslansky, LinkedIn’s head of content products said, "Together, I believe we can make it even easier for professionals around the world to accelerate their careers and realize their potential through the learning and development of new skills."
Lynda.com was founded in 1995 by Lynda Weinman, a technical-skills instructional author. The site has been used an online resource for learning about the likes of Photoshop, HTML, management, and CSS, and offered instructional videos and tutorials long before they became the norm on YouTube.
LinkedIn CEO Jeff Weiner spoke about how the acquisition will help LinkedIn to connect job seekers to jobs through providing access to skills and educational development tools in a post on the company’s blog.
Neither company has said what exactly the plan is for Lynda.com with LinkedIn just yet.
