LinkedIn has Sold off SlideShare for eBook Publishing Platform Scribd

LinkedIn has sold off its presentation platform SlideShare, which it acquired in 2012, to eBook publishing platform Scribd. Terms of the deal were not made public.

As explained by Scribd:

“Today, Scribd’s premium subscription service offers over 1,000,000 professionally published ebooks, audiobooks, podcasts, sheet music, and magazines, alongside over 100 million documents uploaded from our community. These documents include information and educational resources like study guides, business templates, academic papers, public court filings, and more. Now, with the acquisition of SlideShare, we’re excited to add over 40 million presentations to the Scribd reading ecosystem.”

As noted, LinkedIn acquired SlideShare back in 2012, providing another way for professionals to showcase their content in connection with their LinkedIn presence. Since then, LinkedIn has added various SlideShare integration options, and Scribd says that it’s hopeful that the connections between SlideShare and LinkedIn will remain in place.

So why would LinkedIn sell SlideShare?

While LinkedIn’s performance numbers remain solid, and it’s continued to see steady increases in user engagement and revenue, the platform is also weathering the economic impacts of the COVID-19 downturn.

Last month, LinkedIn announced that it would be reducing its global workforce by 6%, largely due to the slowdown in job listings and recruitment activity. At that time, new LinkedIn CEO Ryan Roslansky noted that:

“To continue adapting and accelerating the company as we have been, we need to ensure we are focusing our efforts and resources against our most strategic priorities to set up the company for success today – and well into the future. When we took a hard look at the business, we decided we needed to make some hard calls.”

It seems that SlideShare was also a victim of this assessment, and while SlideShare will remain independent, according to Scribd, you would expect the transition to having some impacts on the business.

For regular users, at this stage, it seems like nothing will really change, but it’ll be worth keeping an eye on updates from SlideShare as it separates from LinkedIn – especially if you’re hosting SlideShare content on your LinkedIn profile.