LinkedIn buys Pulse for $90M, moves deeper into content creation

The news comes one month to the day after a rumor surfaced regarding the possible Pulse takeover hit the Web. At the time, concrete pricing and details were scarce, but the deal was thought to be worth "tens of millions" of dollars.

As noted by AllThingsD, the agreement ultimately amounted to some $90 million, a substantial buy for LinkedIn.

"We believe LinkedIn can be the definitive professional publishing platform – where all professionals come to consume content and where publishers come to share their content," said LinkedIn's head of product and user experience Deep Nishar in a blog post. "Pulse is a perfect complement to this vision. Pulse’s core value proposition is to help foster informed discussions that spark the decisions shaping the world around us through news and information."

The move builds on LinkedIn's existing original content offerings, including the “Influencer” initiative which has influential business figures write what amounts to blog entries that users can peruse on the company's website. LinkedIn Today is another feature that aggregates daily news in a feed relevant to a user's profile settings.

It is unclear what the company plans to do with Pulse, but Nishar said LinkedIn and Pulse share a common goal in using news and information to "spark the decisions shaping the world around us."

"We couldn’t be more thrilled to be working side by side with the Pulse team to create new and better ways to help professionals contribute to and leverage this collective body of business knowledge to help them be great at what they do and from wherever they work," he said.

Pulse is expected to operate as usual in the near term, but could possibly be rolled into LinkedIn's own platform in the coming months.