Forrester's five fears over Microsoft-LinkedIn merger

Merger could lead to user attrition says Forrester analyst, who urges Microsoft to define a strategy for LinkedIn more quickly than it did for Skype or Yammer

A Forrester analyst has poured cold water on Microsoft's $26.2bn (£17.7bn) acquisition of LinkedIn in a blog post raising five objections to the union.

Microsoft claims the deal will accelerate the growth of LinkedIn and its own Office 365 and Dynamics CRM offering.

But in a blog post, Forrester principal analyst Dan Bieler said he is yet to be convinced of the logic of the merger.

Bieler questioned whether LinkedIn's moving under Microsoft's ownership will compromise its status as an independent platform and lead to attrition among its 433 million-strong user base.

"Although the deal, should it go through, would help Microsoft to strengthen its social networking services and professional content, there will be LinkedIn users who are not keen to become sucked into the Microsoft ecosystem as part of their social collaboration activities and abandon LinkedIn as active users," he said.

Bieler also criticised Microsoft's track record of integrating previous acquisitions such as Skype and Yammer and urged the vendor to decide on a strategy for LinkedIn more swiftly or risk the platform losing relevance.

"By the time the new Skype strategy was announced, most of the hardcore Skype users had migrated away towards other social collaboration platforms such as WhatsApp, Facetime, or WeChat," he said.

Bieler advised Microsoft to redouble its mobile efforts due to the fact a large chunk of LinkedIn users' activities are mobile based.

"Microsoft's weak position in mobile ecosystems could dramatically undermine LinkedIn's longer-term opportunities. If Microsoft underestimates the mobile dimension for LinkedIn, the future for LinkedIn could be very questionable. Users are fickle and there is no loyalty to outdated social media platforms," he said.

Some pundits see Microsoft's LinkedIn buy as a revolution in enterprise social networking but Bieler said he did not buy into that viewpoint either.

"I don't see that. Software tools can only enhance collaboration between people. The tools by themselves cannot trigger employees' initiative, creativity, and passion," he said.