Intelligence Rules

There's been a lot written the past couple days about Microsoft acquiring LinkedIn, the business focused social network. The business rationale is focused on Microsoft combining its Office products together with the information available on LinkedIn to create new services for its users. For example, as you head into a meeting that's on your Outlook calendar, Microsoft's Cortana (its digital assistant) can provide you background on each of the attendees that it has gleaned from their LinkedIn profiles. Another example used is the potential opportunity to embed Office tools into the LinkedIn platform to make collaboration on Word documents, spreadsheets, Powerpoint presentations, and so on, easier. On another front, Facebook has recently announced partnerships with POS solution providers to gain access to transaction data which it is combining with location services to understand what stores a shopper goes to and creating a link between Facebook advertising and products purchased.