LinkedIn has made its biggest acquisition deal to date on Thursday. The professional social network has purchased the job matching service Bright for $120 million, made up of 73 percent stock and 27 percent cash. After the deal closes in the first quarter of 2014, several members of Bright’s team will join LinkedIn, including its engineering and product divisions. Existing users will be able to access their data on Bright’s website through February 28. Bright founder Eduardo Vivas said in a statement that the deal took place because “[LinkedIn] shares a similar vision and is equally obsessed about using data and algorithms to connect prospects and employers.” The one problem that Bright apparently lacked was the ability to scale. Yes, Vivas’ team had the talent in-house to build out its product and has successfully calculated billions of scores, but it didn’t have the ability to bring its technology to a much larger marketplace.
