LinkedIn to Buy Pulse Newsreader App for Over $50 Million

LinkedIn will acquire Pulse, the popular newsreader app, in a deal worth a reported $50 to $100 million. The Pulse app, made by San Francisco-based Alphonso Labs, has 20 million users who read more than 10 million stories per day! Previously Alphonso Labs was able to raise about $10 million from venture capital firms like Redpoint Ventures, Greycroft Partners, Mayfield Fund, Lightspeed Investment Partners, New Enterprise Associates and Lerer Ventures.

AllThingsD reported that several companies were in the bidding to take over Pulse, with Microsoft and Yahoo engaged in talks, but LinkedIn being the final suitor. The Pulse app recently added functionality to include social and video feeds, and has become a popular alternative to social readers like Flipboard. Now LinkedIn could take advantage of Pulse’s apps and plugins to feature original content and blog posts from “influential thought leaders” like Richard Branson (a new follow feature on LinkedIn).

This appears another step in LinkedIn’s quest to become your source for news and aggregation (along with LinkedIn today). Some other major acquisitions of LinkedIn recently include SlideShare, Rapportive and CardMunch. LinkedIn currently has more than 200 million active users.

image via appadvice
 
Are you using Pulse yet? How do you think this acquisition will improve LinkedIn’s core services?