LinkedIn is acquiring SlideShare, which allows its users to share presentations online, for US$118.75 million as it tries to find new ways to make its site more useful, the company said on Thursday.
SlideShare allows users to upload presentations publicly or privately, which can be embedded on blogs, websites, company intranets and shared across Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn, so the two companies aren’t new acquaintances.
Exactly how LinkedIn will integrate SlideShare beyond what is possible today remains to be seen. The company is “excited to figure out the best ways our offerings will work together,” according to a LinkedIn blog post. In the meantime, SlideShare will continue to work as it usually does, the post said.
SlideShare users have uploaded more than 9 million presentations. In March, SlideShare had nearly 29 million unique visitors, according to data from market research company ComScore, LinkedIn said.
Besides presentations, SlideShare also hosts documents, PDFs, videos and webinars.
The purchase price is a combination of approximately 45 per cent in cash and 55 per cent in stock, according to LinkedIn. If everything goes according to plan, the acquisition will close during the second quarter.
On Thursday, LinkedIn also released its financial result for the first quarter. Revenue was US$188.5 million, an increase of 101 per cent compared to the first quarter last year. Net income grew from US$2.1 million to US$5 million during the same period.