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I’ve got excited by the recent news, when I heard LinkedIn got acquired by Microsoft for $26.2 Billion, and it is the biggest valuation of a company yet. It hits my guts, what kind of product or service that they’ll be produce together? What are their next play?

Interesting enough to see what would these companies do in the future with each own unique capabilities, yes I’m a fan for both of companies. I use their products daily, such as Microsoft Office (my primary weapon in work, and I’m pretty sure so does for 99.9% people on earth) for example, and LinkedIn as my professional platform, also in daily doze. So then yes, I feel relate to this particular story since their products help me improve my personal daily productivity.

This issue mainly would talk about LinkedIn, because I think that are not many of people familiar and use it properly around me. I do not claim it happened in Bandung, even more in Indonesia, because I do find some LinkedIn profile that awesomely crafted by Indonesian. But I see this as an unfortunate thing, because if we succeed to craft our LinkedIn profile, I think we could get some benefits, and primarily, our professionalism would vastly recognize.

So what is LinkedIn? Based on explanation video that published in LinkedIn Official YouTube Channel :

LinkedIn is the World’s largest professional network, helping people to find and share opportunity everyday.

But how is it relevant to you?

Managing your career is just one reason to join LinkedIn, as you develop your professional profile, you establish authoritative resources on your experiences and capabilities where lets people find you when they search you on the internet. In 2 minutes, you’ll be up and running the most important page on the web you’ll ever have. Do you know what people find when they Google your name? With LinkedIn, you’ll have more control over what appears on Google results, and have a robust profile, it encourages people to approach you with opportunities.

Your reputation summed up by the relationship that you develop over your career. LinkedIn helps you maintain this relationship authentically.

Whether you’re working at the office or on the go, LinkedIn keeps you in touch with people that matter in your career. And since signing up is free, LinkedIn just might be the best investment you’ll ever make in your career.

Well, put it in short, consider it as your professional page, or your digital Curriculum Vitae. I’d like to see it as a platform to showcase our experiences and capabilities, and to connect with like-minded people and even further, to share and engage with opportunity. These, my friend, are the unique strong points that no other social media could do better.

My point here is that, Indonesian people particularly in Social Media, unfortunately, only seek for entertainment. Use and consume it for daily distraction, while actually, we could drive our time into something more productive. Can’t blame anyone or anything though, and yes we all need doze of distraction, but when it’s too much, it does no good. Bear in mind, we barter this distraction with our most precious resource : time. Better think twice, people, better think twice.

I choose to value my time carefully.

Allright, about the acquisition. I’ve read the open letter / official announcement from Jeff Weiner, CEO of LinkedIn himself, and it was fantastic, you should read it for yourself, really really lots of takeaways. Let’s take a peek and have a focus on the core potential of what LinkedIn and Microsoft could possibly do.

Jeff Weiner stated that, LinkedIn mission is to connect the world’s professionals to make them more productive and successful, and their vision is to create economic opportunity for every member of the global workforce, while in the other hand, Microsoft under Satya Nadela’s leadership, has become more agile, innovative, open and purpose-driven company. These companies had alignment on two essential things : Purpose and Structure, and it has been manifested on their Mission statements.

For LinkedIn, it was to connect the world’s professionals to make them more productive and successful, and for Microsoft it was to empower every individual and organization in the world to achieve more.

Essentially, according to Jeff Weiner, they’re both trying to do the same thing but coming at it from two different places : for LinkedIn, it’s the professional network, and for Microsoft, the professional cloud.

It was a virtually identical Mission, then both Jeff Weiner and Satya Nadela recognized that combining these assets would be unique and had the potential to unlock some enormous opportunities.

Here’s the apocalypse that they try to prevent.

All the explanations above would be easier to understand if we also see the causality of it. It’s happening, whether it’s worker displacement, the skills gap, youth unemployment, or socio –  economic stratification, the impact on society will be staggering. Jeff Weiner believes that, creating economic opportunity will be the defining issue of our time, and it’s getting even more challenging every day.

Here are the concrete examples, remember the story of that futurist movie which technology displaces millions of people from their jobs? Well, this is the reality check of it :

1. Foxconn announced it will replace 60,000 factory workers with robots;
2. Walmart announced plans to start testing drones in its warehouses;
3. Tesla Motors, as stated by Elon Musk, is building and predicting fully autonomous car technology would arrive within two years, and it just three samples among other plans from companies to do exploration and exploitation of what technology could brings and also pushes humanity forward, in maybe, at the most of our near future.

That’s why it will be one of major social media in the near future, because what they do matter most especially in this time, and this is the paramount reason why I am writing this article in the first place, hereby I declare myself to do some contributions through LinkedIn universe.

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Yes, I know it’s a kind of heavy reading, but it is necessary for you to aware of this issue. It will be follow by some technical tips and tricks of possibilities on how we use LinkedIn in the next issue. I do expect this issue could be a valuable addition of your knowledge, not only about LinkedIn as a professional platform, but more on threats of what’s coming to our existence in professional world in the near future.

And oh, you could check my LinkedIn profile here, please have a little tour of it!

Thank you.

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EZNinsight is a Journal on Discover an Abundance Life, here we talk about life and culture, and writer’s personal awesome experiences in between. 

find me on Instagram to get my daily intimate session : @albypadmakusumah