LinkedIn acquires SFO-based startup Newsle

LinkedIn today announced that they are acquiring the news tracker app startup Newsle. Three year old San Francisco-based startup is a web application that allows users to follow real news about their Facebook friends, LinkedIn contacts, and public figures.

Over the past year or so, LinkedIn has introduced several new ways to access the exchange of information to be better informed, educated and inspired by the business knowledge. For example, the ability to publish long form posts and add photos, videos and presentations to user's profile; integrated LinkedIn and Pulse; and theInfluencer Program.

However, LinkedIn felt the need to do more and hence added Newsle's co-founders Jonah Varon and Axel Hansen along with their team of engineers - Liz, Farid, Shane, and Nick of Newsle to the LinkedIn family.

Ryan Roslansky, Head of Content Products at LinkedIn wrote on official LinkedIn blog,

LinkedIn and Newsle share a common goal: We both want to provide professional insights that make you better at what you do. For example, knowing more about the people in your network – like when they’re mentioned in the news – can surface relevant insights that help you hit your next meeting with them out of the park.

For the last three years, Newsle has leveraged its disambiguation, natural language processing and machine learning algorithms to build an extremely compelling product that finds blogs and articles that mention you or anyone you care about – colleagues, bosses, industry thought leaders, etc. – and notifies you seconds after they’ve published. We’re excited to work with Newsle’s team to combine this technology with our core assets and build experiences that continue to make you and millions of other professionals more productive and successful.

In the meantime, Newsle users will continue experiencing the great product as always.

Newsle was founded with a simple goal: to deliver important news about the people who matter to you. The Newsle official blog mentioned,

Three years and 2 million users later, we’re happy to say that we’re well on the way toward realizing that goal. LinkedIn is equally passionate about offering insights that can help professionals better do their jobs and will help us accelerate our efforts by making Newsle available to its members.

Post acquisition, Newsle online will be kept as a standalone service as all the functionality will be combined with LinkedIn’s core services.

Newsle had raised $2.6 million till date from Lerer Ventures, Advance Publications and ACBJ, SV Angel, Bloomberg Beta, Maveron, DFJ, Transmedia Capital, Launny Steffens, Ellen Levy, Jon Lazarus, Paul Berry, and Rockwell and Evan Schnabel.