LinkedIn Corp (NYSE:LNKD) acquired Newsle, a machine learning startup that delivers more important news alerts to users by scanning the web and reduces noises from their social networks.
The largest professional network did not reveal the terms of the acquisition. LinkedIn Corp (NYSE:LNKD) indicated that Newsle will continue to operate as a standalone service for the meantime.
LinkedIn absorbs entire Newsle team
Newsle founders Jonah Varon and Axel Hansen together with their team of engineers will join LinkedIn Corp (NYSE:LNKD). According to them, “We’ll keep Newsle online as a standalone service as we combine all the functionality with LinkedIn’s core services.”
Varon and Hansen emphasized in their blogpost that they established Newsle with a simple goal—to deliver important news about the people who matter to you. They said they are on the way towards achieving that goal citing the reason that LinkedIn Corp (NYSE:LNKD) is “equally passionate about offering insights that can help professionals better do their jobs.”
They are confident that the professional social network will help accelerate their efforts in making Newsle available to its members.
LinkedIn and Newsle share common goal
In a blog post, Ryan Roslansky, head of content products at LinkedIn Corp (NYSE:LNKD) wrote, “LinkedIn and Newsle share a common goal: We both want to provide professional insights that make you better at what you do. For example, knowing more about the people in your network – like when they’re mentioned in the news – can surface relevant insights that help you hit your next meeting with them out of the park.”
A compelling service
Roslansky noted that Newsle was able to leverage its disambiguation, natural language processing and machine learning algorithms to build an extremely compelling service capable of finding blogs and articles that mentions a user or anyone that he or she cares about and immediately sending an alert.
Varon and Hansen established Newsle in 2011. The startup raised a total of $2.6 million from several investors including Lerer Ventures, Transmedia Capital and Draper Fisher Jurveston.
LinkedIn Corp (NYSE:LNKD) introduced different services to better educate, inform and inspires its users by providing them further access to the exchange of information existing on its platform.
The professional social network allowed its users to publish long form posts, add photos, videos and presentations on their profile. LinkedIn Corp (NYSE:LNKD) also launched the influencer program and integrated Pulse, a news-reader up to its platform over the past year.
