LinkedIn Acquires Rapportive, Popular Email Plug-In for Social Media Info

LinkedIn (NYSE:LNKD) has decided to acquire technology start-up Rapportive according to AllthingsD. ^[1] While the acquisition is relatively small in size, it could become a useful tool for the company, which has always believed in making simple updates to improve user engagement. LinkedIn competes in the online job search market with companies like Monster (NYSE:MWW) and Craigslist.

See our complete stock analysis for LinkedIn’s stock here

Rapportive Purchase Simplifies Connecting With People

Rapportive makes a browser plug-in for Gmail, which displays the social networking details for an individual if he/she is corresponding on e-mail. In short, a user can directly view the correspondent’s latest tweet and can immediately know if he has added the individual on Facebook/LinkedIn yet. It’s a tool that could increasingly gain relevance as the sheer number of social networking contacts are making it difficult to track whether 2 people are connected to each other on a given social network.

While its not too clear how LinkedIn will customize this tool, for starters the company would like to extend the plug-in to other e-mail services like Hotmail or Yahoo! Mail. The plug-in could also be integrated with the “Apply with LinkedIn” button so that if a candidate follows a company on Facebook he may directly apply to it using “Apply with LinkedIn” on the plug-in.

We currently have a price estimate of $39 for LinkedIn’s stock, which is well below the current market price.

Understand How a Company’s Products Impact its Stock Price at Trefis

1. LinkedIn Is Acquiring Contacts Start-Up Rapportive,  AllthingsD, 7th Feb 2012 [↩]