LinkedIn gobbles up SlideShare

Professional social network LinkedIn has acquired widely-used web presentation sharing platform SlideShare.

LinkedIn CEO Jeff Weiner announced the $118 million acquisition at its first quarter 2012 earnings call last week.

The document sharing platform lets users upload and download presentations, documents, PDFs and videos.

Google recently integrated SlideShare into its Google+ Hangouts service, while salesforce.com more recently created its own “branded salesforce network" on SlideShare to support its content creation business.'

LinkedIn made a strong debut on the New York Stock exchange last year. 

The company’s first quarter revenues were US$188.5 million, up 101 per cent on its 2011 first quarter, with net income for the quarter of US$5 million. 

The bulk of its earnings came from its ‘hiring solutions’ business, launched shortly after its IPO, which generated US$102 million.

Marketing solutions generated US$48 million while ‘premium subscriptions raised US$37 million.