With its retooled Connected delivering timely notifications around professional circles, LinkedIn acquired startup Newsle to help LinkedIn users stay dialed into hard news around their networks. LinkedIn says Newsle's news aggregation services will power LinkedIn apps, while leaving Newsle's own app intact.
Newsle centralizes news about contacts users have collected on Facebook, LinkedIn and other social networking sites. The news aggregation service focuses on delivering hard news about users' contacts, rather than simply relaying Tweets and Facebook posts.
Ryan Roslansky, head of Content Products at LinkedIn, said the acquisition of Newsle was part of his company's broad effort to help LinkedIn users stay informed on the professional side of their social networks. He said Newsle shared LinkedIn's vision, which makes their marriage work.
"LinkedIn and Newsle share a common goal: We both want to provide professional insights that make you better at what you do," said Roslansky. "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."
Roslansky said Newsle's core services function on machine learning and language processing, which has the ability to discern ambiguous terms and comb news sources for content that matters to its users. If a blog or news release mentions a Newsle user's contacts, the service will pick up on it and bring the content home.
"We're excited to work with Newsle's team to combine this technology with our core assets and build experiences that continue to make you and millions of other professionals more productive and successful," stated Roslansky.
Newsle took to its blog to confirm the recent acquisition, praise its new parent company and thank its supporting cast. Newsle said it would retain its team of engineers as it transitioned into LinkedIn's fold.
"We founded Newsle with a simple goal: to deliver important news about the people who matter to you," stated Newsle in a blog post. "Three years and 2 million users later, we're happy to say that we're well on the way toward realizing that goal. LinkedIn is equally passionate about offering insights that can help professionals better do their jobs and will help us accelerate our efforts by making Newsle available to its members."
The acquisition comes hot on the heels of LinkedIn's upgrade of its Contacts app, now branded "Connected," which was released on July 10. The Connected app was said to have been designed to strengthen professional bonds by delivering notifications that range from job changes and promotions to birthdays and work anniversaries.
