Congratulations Lynda.com!<p>Story time. When I was in high school, I worked in a little computer lab in my small hometown of Ojai, California, that taught classes in Photoshop, Fireworks, web design and development, Flash, and more. That little technology education company was just called "Lynda," and classes were taught directly by Lynda Weinman, Bruce Heavin, and others. There were maybe ten or twelve employees. I learned a lot from them over two summers about the intersection of development and design, about teaching and working with people, and so much more. It launched my interest in user experience design and development. Not to mention the epic LAN parties we used to have in that computer lab with all the top-of-the-line graphics workstations... good times.<p>I have a lot to be thankful for, and I'm so genuinely happy to see their success. They were the nicest people to work with, and I'm sure that remained true as they grew. Congrats to these guys, and I hope they find a good place with LinkedIn.
This is a pretty interesting acquisition. Linkedin is trying to position themselves as a full service job market. If you want a particular job, go to Linkedin and even if you are missing a few skills you can pick it up on their site and get "Linkedin Certified". This provides Linkedin with a series of "Linkedin Certified Professionals" that recruiters need to pay to get access to. It's an interesting position to be in: desired from both sides of the equation (Job Seekers and Recruiters/Talent Sourcers).
This, to me, is terrible news. I am a big fan of Lynda.com. They've always had a great library (both for tech' stuff but are also one of few sites that offer non-tech video training (business courses, photography, etc) and their prices were always very reasonable.<p>LinkedIn can only make the site worse as far as I am concerned, and I already avoid LinkedIn due to the fact that they've essentially become spammers who work to allow other spammers to spam you. That's all they are, a giant spam platform at this point.<p>So too bad about Lynda. It will be greatly missed (by me).
As an outsider looking in, LinkedIn's purchase of Lynda.com looks like an odd duck in comparison to their previous acquisitions[1].<p>As far as I can tell, the Lynda.com brand name isn't that well known outside of tech circles. (Virtually all of their courses are Adobe, Microsoft Office, and web development, etc) I'm guessing those computer courses are relevant to less than 5% of LinkedIn's user base. It was very recently (last year or so) that Lynda started doing more business courses[2] (how to calculate ROI, how to write a business plan, etc) Since those business courses are probably their thinnest and weakest offerings, I can only speculate that it was a partly a "proof-of-concept" to show a prospective acquirer (such as LinkedIn) the breadth of topics the content platform could deliver.<p>In that case, LinkedIn is really buying Lynda's content delivery platform (<i>the technology</i>) as opposed to seeing value in the existing portfolio of courses (<i>the copyrights</i>).<p>It will be interesting to see how it plays out. I'm somewhat saddened that a controversial company like LinkedIn (UI dark patterns, creepy privacy invasions) was the one who bought them. I would have preferred a company like github (synergy with code sharing) or Apple (enhance iTunesU) to do it. Unfortunately, github doesn't have the cash/stock and Apple is busy with more grandiose plans.<p>[1]<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LinkedIn#Acquisitions" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LinkedIn#Acquisitions</a><p>[2]<a href="http://www.lynda.com/Business-Skills-training-tutorials/484-0.html?previousCategory=29" rel="nofollow">http://www.lynda.com/Business-Skills-training-tutorials/484-...</a>
One of the many steps we will see that will have a net effect of disintermediating traditional secondary education. With companies like LinkedIn filling an Uber type role.<p>It used to be that the secondary degree was the middle man between employee and employer (for many professions).<p>Certifications from companies like Microsoft and Cisco changed this in some realms.<p>MOOCs and companies like Lynda expanded to different sectors.<p>Now layers like LinkedIn can essentially be the Uber between employers and the myriad of certifications and degrees that will be available to employees. An Uber layer for connection, credibility, aggregation, certification, etc.<p>I don't believe traditional secondary education gets completely disintermediated. But I believe the landscape becomes much more heterogeneous, which is a good thing.
No idea on valuations on this but seems kinda crazy to pay so much when all of the various free MOOC offerings seem to be getting better and better. Realize there's a difference motivation-wise when you actually have to pay and that "learn how to do x" vs "learn about the subject x is under" has value but don't know if $1.5bn is that difference.<p>I see great value for Linkedin users if there's some "official" certification for skills learned through Lynda services that leads to them being more marketable. That's pretty exciting.
I'm 100% sure LinkedIn probably offered to buy Coursera at a similar price:
1. A lot of Coursera's engineers are LinkedIn veterans.
2. Coursera is arguably a much better quality and more highly regarded education platform than Lynda.
3. Coursera certifications were something LinkedIn and Coursera were actively working on.<p>I would imagine that Coursera refused because their vision of education is much broader than what they might have been able to achieve within LinkedIn. What do you guys think?
To me, this is another sign of most Linkedin profiles gradually becoming just another resume on the web and LinkedIn as the next web generation's soft-core version of Monster.com.<p>LinkedIn isn't a social network because having a LinkedIn profile is mostly about required maintenance. The main activity is updating [and rolling back spurious skill endorsements]. Integrating online education is just another recruiter platform service. Professional colleagues don't care if I took a PhotoShop class online.
This is a very bad day for me. I was working on the integration of skills and education at fillskills.com. Serves me well since I gave up on it because of various reasons. Mostly because I was afraid of what people would say when I launched.<p>This is great for education in general though. Imagine finding the skills to you need to build your career and then the exact education to build it with.
A wonder if it's a coincidence that the latest video published today is: Up and Running with LinkedIn.<p>Seriously, as a long time Lynda.com subscriber, I've noticed a steady increase in the volume of courses in the "business" category. As a designer/developer, I find some of the business videos quite interesting and a nice expansion beyond their core design-centric courses.<p>I definitely see the synergies, but am a bit concerned that a company the size of LI is going to slowly move away from the designer/developer focused videos to certification-oriented courses; more of a direct competitor to Udacity's Nanodegrees and Coursera's Specialization Certificates. However, there are much better options these days for targeted developer video courses (e.g. Egghead, Tuts+, Laracasts, etc.). This was a great exit for Lynda.com--they have built up an amazing brand over many years.<p>LI brings such a massive scale with great channels to monetize courses beyond subscriptions. Enticing a relatively small percentage of the LI user base to upgrade to a new paid subscription tier justifies the cost; not even considering the additional opportunities this creates for both employers and job seekers.
At first, I was thinking the same as many others "this is terrible news!" but then I started thinking about the data that LinkedIn has and how they could apply it to Lynda.com<p>Imagine some scenarios:<p>- You are looking at a job. Based on the requirements, LinkedIn can recommend different Lynda courses you may take. Now, instead of meeting some of the requirements and not knowing the next step, you can fill those gaps.<p>- LinkedIn knows what people are endorsed for and who is "similar" to you. Based on that, they can make recommendations for courses that may improve/expand your skills to become more like the other person.. or potentially stand out from that person.<p>- You're posting a job. Instead of broadcasting it to the world, you can filter it to "promote to people who have skill X listed or who have taken one of these Y courses." Now you're more likely to get a better qualified set of candidates.<p>Disclosure: Two time Lynda author here.
Congrats to Lynda.com a service I can't recommend enough if you want to get started with programming.<p>It's been around forever and the quality is amazing. I learned to program using it and I always recommend people to use it if they can afford it.<p>Going to be interesting to see where they will take this.
oh, sh*t, no!<p>I loved the site. Now I will have to add it to the long list of companies that got bought and lost their essence, like cdbaby, reddit, or digg.<p>I started using whassapp in order to scape facebook. Now those bubble monsters are acquiring everything they can while money is free.
Why not udemy/coursera/udacity? Lynda is great but seems a bit "old-style", but anyway I think this is the right move, a job site companied by training
Linda.com is one of those rare companies that has tempered assaults on their business model from every flank by sticking to what they do best and have somehow managed to come out shining.<p>Seriously, these guys were founded in 1995, they've been through all of the web turmoil and still managed to improve their technology offerings and stay relevant. Not sure what this acquisition means, but I hope things don't change much.
This could be interesting if you of it think from the ideal, that college traditional education is becoming an outdated format and project based learning is leading the way to gain real world experience.
Now job seekers are creating a blank linked-in profile, taking and finishing some online course to show there skills, while automatically generating their resumes and profiles for employers to see.
Much has been made of online education's mini bubble, with an emphasis on MOOcs like Coursera, Udacity, and edX. Having taken several of these classes, it all seemed kind of silly to me. They're great for curiosity and continuing education, but nowhere near replacing a college degree.<p>Seeing the kind of money that's going into these ventures, there are obviously people still betting big. I think they face a real challenge marketing these classes and certifications as valuable to the students and employers. Coursera used to award a free statement of accomplishment (a PDF, basically). The classes that I've taken recently only recognize students who pay for a verified certificate. The fee is really small, but it's not really worth anything to me.<p>I've very much enjoyed having free access to so many different classes. I don't know whether it's sustainable as is, but I fear that an acquisition like this may step up the pressure to monetize, show a profit, etc.
Wonder how they will be able to compete with free online courses, there are plenty of them and they're just as quality. I also wonder how Linked-in itself can compete with other social networks.
Isn't this a good time to recapitulate the things why LinkedIn is not exactly ideal social network? I forgot most of it, other than how they scour through people's address books.
Whenever I want to learn something I just search on the Internet or ask experiences people to recommend a book. Or lookup what course literature the well known schools are using.<p>What are the benefit of online courses more then that you get a badge or paper that says you have taken the course?
linked in buy lynda.com, and it provides online training based on the skill categories. It is innovative.Actually I never use lynda.com before. Hope the sessions will be continuous, informative and effective.