Social networking service LinkedIn Corp. announced today that it has bought alert service Newsle as a way to let users know what's going on with important connections.
Both companies said in joint statements that users will now be able to know more about what different people on the website are up to, according to CNET. The acquisition is expected to support LinkedIn's current feature that sends alerts to a user's connections whenever they are mentioned in articles.
"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," said Ryan Roslansky, a spokesman for LinkedIn.
As part of the deal, Newsle's founders Jonah Varon and Axel Hansen, as well as the company's team of engineers, which includes four employees, will be joining LinkedIn, TechCrunch reported. The service looks for blogs and articles through the Web where specific people are mentioned, and then brings back significant results. Creating natural language processing and disambiguation algorithms has been a major priority for Newsle in making sure it brings back the best content for its users.
Founded in January 2011, the startup has raised $2.6 million in funding from Transmedia Capital, Draper Fisher Jurveston and other investors. Both LinkedIn and Newsle said that for now, the startup will still operate as its own product.
The acquisition is LinkedIn's most recent move in improving different parts of its site, CNET reported. The company bought startup Bright for $120 million in February as a way to improve its features for job searching. LinkedIn released a new app for job seekers a few months later, after discovering that over 40 percent of its consumers currently use mobile devices to look for jobs. The company also released an updated version of its contacts app last week, which features notifications about what other users are doing.
