LinkedIn To Acquire Popular News Reader Pulse For $50M [REPORT]

LinkedIn Corp (NYSE:LNKD), the 200-million-member-strong professional network, is set to acquire Pulse for up to $5o million, All Things D reported.

Citing anonymous sources, AllThingsD reported that Pulse had been in talks with several big companies for its acquisition out of which, Yahoo! Inc. (NASDAQ:YHOO), Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT) and LinkedIn were the most potential buys.

Winning the deal with the popular newsreader, LinkedIn Corp (NYSE:LNKD) is likely to close the deal between $50 and $100 million. No official word has however been received by either LinkedIn or Alphonso Labs, the team behind the Pulse newsreader.

LinkedIn Corp (NYSE:LNKD) may not, unlike other acquisition, kill the Pulse newsreader after acquiring it and may use the Pulse team’s design to modify its own personalized news feed.

Alphonso Labs has raised about $10 million from Redpoint Ventures, Greycroft Partners, Mayfield Fund, Lightspeed Investment Partners, New Enterprise Associates and Lerer Ventures. The team has forged partnerships with the leading publishers, and over 20 million people use its beautifully designed apps.

Considering the number of changes that the professional social network took from interface revamping to a central hub for consuming online content, the acquisition makes all sense. LinkedIn’s 2013 goals now include adding new features to its mobile apps (the fastest growing consumer product) and increasing engagement with the content on its homepage.

Previous acquisitions have also helped in that transition. The most high-profile of these up until now saw LinkedIn Corp (NYSE:LNKD) shell out US$118-million for SlideShare last year.

The popular newsreader app was formed at Stanford University, and proved to be an overnight sensation.