Microsoft Corp.’s purchase of LinkedIn Corp. last month gives it a foothold in social media, but according to Forrester Research Inc. the real value of the acquisition is in the data the software giant will be able to access regarding the identity and preferences of LinkedIn members who use Microsoft products.

“Microsoft lags significantly in two areas: identity and a proprietary data asset,” Forrester says in the report, “Microsoft Bets on Social to Transform the Business Customer Experience.” “LinkedIn solves that problem handily. By integrating 433 million LinkedIn profiles into its own product and service offerings, Microsoft will get its hands on data about how those individuals use products like Office 365, email and Skype.” Microsoft Office, including its Outlook email software, is one of Microsoft’s core products. Microsoft acquired the internet communications platform Skype in 2011.

From a B2B perspective, Forrester says, Microsoft will be able to access and use profiles and preferences of LinkedIn members to personalize its messaging and product offerings to people who use or have expressed interest in its products. That personalization will help Microsoft consumerize how it deals with business customers, which increasingly is a necessity rather than a luxury.

Social platforms like LinkedIn can also give sellers a better idea of what buyers value, increasing opportunities to connect with customers and prospects with more personalized communications throughout their buying process, Forrester says. The report also discusses how Microsoft Dynamics software can become a more viable option as a customer relationship management application for B2B commerce, because Dynamics will now be able to exclusively integrate LinkedIn’s Sales Navigator, a tool that lets companies search for pertinent sales leads among LinkedIn members.

But for me, as a millennial, the most interesting piece was this one:

“There is tremendous potential value in understanding employee interactions on LinkedIn…as more and more millennials, who are not as loyal to their employers as previous generations, join the workforce, employee retention will be a key challenge. Visibility into various signals, such as an uptick in connections to a competitor, could let a firm proactively manage unwanted churn.”

I’m sure the above quoted paragraph wasn’t meant to sound as ominous as it sounded to me, but it still struck me as a bit Big Brother-ish. And it might as well to other millennials, a term generally used for any person who reached young adulthood around the year 2000.

The idea of an employer monitoring who I’m talking to in an effort to preempt a job offer seems to me not only inappropriate, but reading too much into a mostly innocuous habit of working millennials. Another Forrester report, “Data Digest: Putting The ‘Work’ In Social Network,” found that the percentage of employees aged 18-34 using social media at work dwarfs that of older employees. 45% of employees 18-34 years old said they use social media every day, compared with just 24% of employees 35 or older.

The Data Digest report also found that 27% of employees across the globe use social media for work every day. LinkedIn CEO Jeff Weiner said that his company’s agreement with Microsoft would help the “common mission to empower people and organizations.” The author of Forrester’s Data Digest report, Anjali Lai, says she believes that empowerment in the workplace is very attractive, especially to millennial employees. But how are people using social media at work?

Pew Research’s June 2016 report, “Social Media and The Workplace,” surveyed 795 American adults who were employed full- or part-time about why they use social media while on the job. In this survey “social media” was defined as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram and Pinterest. Responders could choose more than one answer. The leading answers were:       
   

• Take a mental break from work: 34%
• Connect with friends and family at work: 27%
• Make or support professional connections: 24%
• Get information that helps solve problems at work: 20%
• Build or strengthen personal relationships with coworkers: 17%
• Ask work-related questions of people outside the organization: 12%
• Ask work-related question of people inside the organization: 12%

That’s certainly a mixed bag. I’m a proponent of using social media to gather information. I use Twitter and LinkedIn because I work in news and those social networks are a good place to find it. I also think that the fact that I live in a world of unprecedented information is an incredible opportunity. I’m doing myself a disservice if I’m not consuming as much of it as I can. At the same time, I’m not going to pretend like there aren’t thousands of people at this very moment scrolling through non-work-related Instagram pictures and liking friends’ Facebook statuses while on the clock.

It’s a habit, and much like any other habit it can manifest itself in positive and negative ways. But in talking to friends for this blog, I haven’t been able to find anyone who is actively looking for new jobs while on the clock. Even if they’re looking, their activity is done through email and phone calls, certainly not in a public space like LinkedIn. The use of social media by employers to monitor employees looks more like a red herring than a way to gather actionable knowledge about employees.

It’s undeniable that by acquiring LinkedIn, Microsoft has improved its ability to reach and connect with businesses. For me, that’s where businesses have the most to gain, by gathering information on their customers they can use to make it easier for them to buy the products they need. But this idea that LinkedIn opens some window into younger employees that didn’t previously exist is flimsy. Now if you’ll excuse me, I just thought of a good tweet.

 

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