Microsoft has announced the launch of a new service called LinkedIn Live corporate video production for its social network designed for connecting professionals to one another, LinkedIn. During the summer of 2016, Microsoft acquired the professional social media network for a price in excess of $25 million. At the time, it qualified as the largest purchase yet made under the leadership of Satya Nadella, who currently occupies the position of CEO of Microsoft. Since then, Microsoft has dedicated a significant amount of resources and personnel to updating and streamlining the recently acquired social media service, and that time and dedication is beginning to deliver.
For the moment, LinkedIn Live isn’t available to every user of the professional social media service. Only LinkedIn users who receive an invite are currently eligible to participate in the social media website’s newest corporate video production function. However, those LinkedIn users who receive and accept an invitation will be able to use the function to stream video to groups of other participating users. At the moment, it has not been made clear whether or not LinkedIn Live is a service which will become available for all users of the social network, but it is possible that it will become a standard feature once beta testing has been completed.
Currently, Microsoft is keeping a tight rein on the invitations in order to ensure only the highest quality and most well-polished videos are broadcast as they christen the new corporate video production service for the website. While Microsoft has largely permitted LinkedIn to operate independently since its acquisition in 2016, the LinkedIn Live service has been a notable exception, with Azure Media Services personally handling much of the encoding for the new feature. Another interesting detail is the fact that despite specializing in video messaging, Skype is not involved in this endeavor.
There has already been significant user response to the new feature, and the additional functionality could serve as a significant boon for Microsoft’s professional social media service. A recent quarterly report released by the tech giant shows that LinkedIn has undergone significant growth in recent months. With more than 500 million regular users, Microsoft has identified the professional social media network as a possible site for even more growth. If the LinkedIn Live service proves to be as successful as Microsoft seems to think it will be, the network could soon see the addition of even more users.
