UPDATED 00:25 EDT / JUNE 22 2016

NEWS

In good faith: Can Microsoft be trusted with LinkedIn social data?

Following Microsoft’s acquisition of LinkedIn Corp. for $26.2 billion one of Microsoft’s partners, harmon.ie, a company that develops mobile collaboration tools for Microsoft services, believes Microsoft and its partners stand to benefit considerably from “LinkedIn’s treasure trove of information”. But there are some obstacles Microsoft will have to overcome, harmon.ie asserts, and one of those is possibility of LinkedIn users having trust issues with Microsoft owning more of their personal information.

Microsoft’s intention is to build a massive professional social network, synergising its own Office Graph – information derived from mapping billions of interactions across Microsoft’s Office suite – and LinkedIn’s graph which, collects information relating to employment such as potential, relevant job opportunities and networking.

David Lavenda, information overload researcher and VP of product strategy at harmon.ie., told SiliconANGLE, “With LinkedIn integration, not only will Office Graph know who is sharing information with whom and about what, but there will also be a layer of information about the individual (supplied by LinkedIn) that will enrich the recommendations that Office Graph can provide. From a business perspective, it makes total sense for Microsoft to own this information, rather than to interface with it as an independent data source.”

Chief Research Officer, SiliconANGLE and GM, Wikibon, Peter Burris agrees. “Microsoft has been evolving Office and other products to project a ‘future of work,’ but hasn’t been able to garner the ‘business graph’ necessary to really realize that strategy. The Yammer acquisition was an attempt in this direction; I think LinkedIn is an even stronger move in this direction,” said Burris, adding, “What else is out there? Slack (once somebody figures out what it does)?”

Integrating data in good faith

From a partner’s perspective, Lavenda believes the acquisition is very beneficial, seeing that LinkedIn data will be accessible directly from Microsoft’s APIs. Nonetheless, he believes there are two potential difficulties Microsoft will have to overcome.

“First, it’s up in the air whether Microsoft can successfully integrate LinkedIn into its infrastructure, something it was largely unable to do with social network service Yammer, which seems to be slowly dying on the Microsoft vine,” said Lavenda.

The other potential problem is the possibility of LinkedIn users, namely professional networkers, not being comfortable with more of their personal data being owned by Microsoft. Lavenda believes that LinkedIn’s professional users are “extremely sensitive” about giving Microsoft too much information.

Lavenda expands, stating that consumers are starting to get nervous as to how much personal information we have out there. “The amount of information that companies like Google and Microsoft have on us is stunning. With Microsoft, it’s only getting worse. The new Windows 10 was beset with an outburst of outrage about privacy invasions that are part of the default install,” says Lavenda.

He uses Cortana as an example, which asks users to provide: ‘location and location history, contacts, voice input, searching history, calendar details, content and communication history from messages and apps, and other information on your device’, while in the Edge browser Cortana collects and uses one’s browsing history.

“Now, add to that mix,” says Lavenda,  “Not only your own personal information, but your professional connections and interests from LinkedIn. Pepper in business signals provided to Office Graph from all your productivity apps like Word, Powerpoint, and Excel, as well as social connections, and Microsoft pretty much has a lock on your persona. What happens to that data is making us, and should make us, nervous.”

A backlash

He believes we are starting to see the “germination of a backlash”, over what control we have over our personal information. “Anyone who is thinking about ‘a few unsolicited emails is still worth the free services I am getting online’ should consider that the big cloud vendors like Google, Microsoft, and Facebook want to know more about us so they can provide more targeted information (and sell us more stuff). That sounds like a good thing until you consider that it can (and does) perpetuate information bubbles that polarize people’s views and has even been shown to be able to sway political elections.”

Lavenda believes that the prospect of Microsoft now being able to cross-reference personal with professional data should, at the very minimum, spark a conversation about how much information being stored in one place is a good thing. To say nothing about the dangers of that information leaking out to third parties.

“This raises the question of whether the acquisition represents an opportunity for a third-party business-social player or partnership between old stalwarts like ZoomInfo and Plaxo is possible,” said Lavenda, adding, “If the past is any indication of the future, then the prospect for a larger and more comprehensive Microsoft is anything but assured.”

Failure of Yammer integration

Lavenda points out Microsoft’s statement following its 2012 acquisition of Yammer. At that time, it was said that ‘Microsoft has committed to ‘maintain Yammer’s brand, product and business.’  Similar to what Microsoft said about LinkedIn last week. However, Lavenda says that customers are confused about which tools to use and why one vendor has so many overlapping tools and services.

“After several years in to the Yammer acquisition, people expected there to be serious integration between Yammer and other Microsoft tools; this has largely not happened. In fact, Microsoft’s strategy around collaboration remains cloudy at best. There is SharePoint, Skype for Business, Yammer, and now Office Groups which all provide disparate social and collaboration capabilities.”

To an outside observer Lavenda feels that it seems clear that Yammer has lost its luster and Microsoft’s focus has shifted to Office Groups as the flagship social/collaboration platform. “The bottom line is that Microsoft, over four years, has been unable or unwilling to really integrate Yammer in a way that provides additional value to Microsoft customers,” says Lavenda,  “This may be attributed to a strategic decision, but is almost certainly exacerbated by different corporate cultures and product technologies. This gulf has left a void for social tools that new entrants like Slack are now filling.”

Lavenda asserts that if the same happens with LinkedIn, some of LinkedIn’s former competitors, who have pivoted but still maintain user data, might find an opening to (re)capture the lucrative world of business social networking.

 

Photo credit: Nan Palmero via Flickr

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