On August 11, 2020, LinkedIn announced that it's selling SlideShare, the hosting service for presentations and other professional content, to Scribd. The terms of the deal were not disclosed. Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati represented LinkedIn in the transaction.
In addition to SlideShare's archival content, Scribd is acquiring its 100 million users, as well as its presentation-upload and hosting tools. According to LinkedIn, Scribd will begin operating the SlideShare business on September 24. LinkedIn acquired SlideShare in 2012 in a transaction in which Wilson Sonsini also represented LinkedIn. Since then, LinkedIn has incorporated content-sharing capabilities directly into the LinkedIn platform. Scribd has more than 100 million community-uploaded documents on its platform, while its premium subscription service offers more than one million professionally published e-books, audiobooks, podcasts, sheet music, and magazines.
The Wilson Sonsini team that represented LinkedIn in the transaction includes:
M&A
Brad Finkelstein
Rich Mullen
Elia Perez Villamarin
Technology Transactions
Jamie Clessuras
Gary Greenstein
Data & Privacy
Matt Staples
Daniel Chen
For more information, please see Scribd's announcement.