LinkedIn Corp (LNKD) Announces Plan To Buy Bright

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Along with its fourth quarter earnings tonight, LinkedIn Corp (NYSE:LNKD) announced plans to acquire Bright, which brings data matching technology which it plans to use to “connect prospects and employers.”

“What LinkedIn does best is connect talent with opportunity at massive scale,” said Deep Nishar, SVP of Products and User Experience, in a statement. “By leveraging Bright’s data-driven matching technology, machine-learning algorithms and domain expertise, we can accelerate our efforts and build out the Economic Graph.”

LinkedIn to pay $120 million for Bright

The social network said the deal is worth about $120 million, which includes about 73% stock and 27% cash. In a press release, it also said that the issued stock will be done “in a private placement” and that the deal is expected to close sometime in the current quarter, which ends in March.

As part of the deal, a number of employees from Bright will go to LinkedIn Corp (NYSE:LNKD). The company’s Engineering and Product division goes along under the terms. Bright’s current users and Hiring Solutions customers will still be able to get into their current data on its website through the end of February.

“We’re excited to join LinkedIn because the company shares a similar vision and is equally obsessed about using data and algorithms to connect prospects and employers,” said Eduardo Vivas, who founded Bright in February 2011.

LinkedIn on the Bright acquisition

LinkedIn Corp (LNKD) Talent Solutions VP Parker Barrille blogged about the acquisition on the social network’s official blog. He said LinkedIn and Bright have a lot in common, both being “passionate about connecting talent with opportunity at massive scale and obsessed with increasing the effectiveness of the job seeking and recruiting processes. He also said that they were already using data to match members with the right jobs through some of their products, like Jobs You May Be Interested In and LinkedIn Recruiter. As a result, he said the acquisition of Bright just seems to make sense.

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