LinkedIn acquires content recommendation firm mSpoke


4 Aug 2010

Professional social networking site LinkedIn has acquired mSpoke, a firm that specialises in personal media recommendations based on individualised algorithms that calculate relevance of online content.

While mSpoke’s Modular Replacement IP powers its FeedHub service that ‘automagically’ picks relevant posts from a set of RSS feed sources, LinkedIn will most likely be using this to help users better what LinkedIn content to pay attention to.

“mSpoke and LinkedIn’s shared focus on generating relevant content make this acquisition a natural fit for us,” said Jeff Weiner, CEO of LinkedIn.

“We’re actively investing in solutions that help deliver valuable professional insights to LinkedIn members. The addition of mSpoke’s talented team of technologists make it an even more compelling opportunity for LinkedIn.”

LinkedIn’s 75-million strong network will benefit from mSpoke’s technology, “generating relevancy from the rich stream of content” that its members post, upload and link to every day.

“As we spent time with the LinkedIn team, we were struck by how similar our visions are,” said Dean Thompson, one of mSpoke’s three co-founders.