Many acquisitions lead to product overlap, and Microsoft's $26.2 billion purchase of LinkedIn a year ago is no different. Redmond has announced that Docs.com, the filesharing service it launched in 2010, will be shuttered by December 15. Here's the rationale Microsoft gave for the move:
Following Microsoft’s acquisition of LinkedIn, SlideShare has joined the Microsoft family, and represents the ideal platform for publishing your Word, PowerPoint, and PDF content with its audience of 70 million professionals, and vast content library. For custom sharing, OneDrive offers additional tools, permission settings, and security to help share and protect your data and content. With the retirement of the Docs.com service, we hope to streamline our offerings in this space and provide you with a more cohesive experience.
As of now, it's no longer possible to create a new Docs.com account, although existing users can publish and edit files until August 1. After that it's read-only through December 14. Users can choose to have compatible files automatically backed up to OneDrive or OneDrive for Business, but not to SlideShare.
To put it mildly, Docs.com has not been a runaway success for Microsoft. Initially launched in partnership with Facebook, Docs.com was an attempt to find synergies between Microsoft's online productivity software and the massive audience provided by the social network.
While you can still login to Docs.com with your Facebook account, the relationship between the platforms has long since faded into the deep background, thanks in part to factors such as Facebook's move to create Workplace by Facebook. Moreover, OneDrive has existed under various names and forms since 2007, and today has a much richer feature set than Docs.com. The case for redundancy is solid.
SlideShare, meanwhile, is no replacement for either Docs.com or OneDrive. Rather, it's a highly popular but uniquely positioned document-sharing service with a large existing audience of business users, both individual and corporate. The site gets 70 million unique visitors a month and 38 million registered users. While it competes with the likes of Scribd, SlideShare's already deep integration with the massive LinkedIn network is something rivals can't say they also have.
The imminent end of Docs.com is welcome one, as it will free up resources Microsoft can use to focus more attention on SlideShare's roadmap, not to mention integrating LinkedIn, says Constellation Research VP and principal analyst Alan Lepofsky.
"While I am sure a lot is going on in the background, not a lot of new features or integrations have manifested yet in their products," and it was disappointing that LinkedIn its related APIs didn't take high priority at last month's Build developer conference, he adds.
"What we're waiting to see is how LinkedIn and Dynamics come together," Lepofsky says. Indeed, the potential for synergies between LinkedIn and Microsoft's business applications has been a much-discussed topic since the acquisition.
SlideShare's capabilities and audience have a natural alignment with Dynamics, especially for CRM (customer relationship management), marketing, recruiting and employee training. Enterprises have used SlideShare this way for years, albeit mostly in an ad-hoc manner. Now Microsoft has an opportunity to tightly integrate the SlideShare experience with Dynamics, while adding enterprise-friendly features. Constellation expects Microsoft will reveal its intentions along this lines—as well as a broader vision for the LinkedIn-Dynamics combination—at its Envision conference in September.
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