It’s been almost two years since LinkedIn acquired Lynda.com for $1.5 billion. In September last year, LinkedIn launched LinkedIn Learning.

It is a new online education platform that was mostly based on content from its Lynda.com acquisition. The platform lives inside of LinkedIn — that is, it’s tied to your LinkedIn account and you don’t need a separate Lynda.com account. It’s also priced similarly to Lynda.com: it costs $24.99/month if paid annually.

Introducing LinkedIn Learning.

Just a few days ago, LinkedIn announced that it had reached a major milestone of 500 million members. It is one of the world’s most trafficked site on the internet. And now LinkedIn is using its heft to aggressively promote LinkedIn Learning to all of its users.

Recently, courses from LinkedIn Learning have started to be shown on all member profile pages. They’re shown on the right-hand sidebar, below the “People also viewed” section. The courses that are recommended are based on the skills of the member’s profile. At this moment, the recommendations can be hit or miss.

Beyond re-using courses from Lynda.com, LinkedIn Learning’s team has also been creating video content based on interviews with thought leaders and influencers. I came across some of these videos when I flew with Virgin America. It was part of the in-flight entertainment system. Find more information here.

LinkedIn has also been producing videos that are embedded in articles published on LinkedIn. The videos themselves are hosted on SlideShare, another LinkedIn acquisition.

An example would be a video clip (shown below) of Barbara Oakley, the instructor behind the immensely popular Learning How To Learn MOOC. She recently launched a new book and MOOC, both entitled Mindshift. The video shown below was embedded in an article she published on LinkedIn.

It’s not clear if this video will be part of LinkedIn Learning sometime in the future.
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