LinkedIn buys digital briefing book Refresh

Steven Loeb · April 2, 2015 · Short URL: https://vator.tv/n/3cf5

Refresh scours the Internet and social media to create dossiers on prospective employers

Refresh joins LinkedIn

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(Updated with comment from LinkedIn)

Unlike most social networks that use advertising as their main, and pretty much only, source of income, LinkedIn makes most of its money as a recruiting platform, connecting people with prospective employers. What most people need when they are about to go on a job interview, or any meeting for that matter, is as much information about the company, and the person they are meeting with, as possible.

That is why LinkedIn has acquired Refresh, a mobile application that delivers an instant dossier about people you meet. The purchase was revealed in a blog post from Refresh co-founder Bhavin Shah on Thursday.

"I started Refresh three years ago with Paul Tyma to create a digital briefing book that every professional could use to discover common ground and build stronger relationships with people they were meeting," he wrote. "Since then Refresh has surfaced insights associated with hundreds of millions of meetings, and has been central to countless connections and closed deals."

Becoming a part of LinkedIn, he said, would give Refresh the chance to scale and grow in a way that would have been impossible on its own.

"Our joint passion for delivering insights that help professionals be more productive is what makes joining LinkedIn so exciting. Plus, LinkedIn gives us an opportunity to share insights with more than 347 million professionals across the globe," Shah wrote.

No financial terms of the deal were disclosed, but he did reveal that Refresh has stopped taking new users and will be shutting down its App on April 15th. Twelve of Refresh’s employees are joining LinkedIn. They start April 6 in Mountain View, but the company is not disclosing which team they’re joining. 

"Our team will focus its efforts on providing LinkedIn members with more insights to help them better do their jobs," is how Shah worded it in his post.

"Refresh will help us surface even more insights that our members can use to be more successful and productive," a LinkedIn spokesperson told VatorNews.

The Mountain View, California-based Refresh analyzes profiles, statuses, and events across social networks to generate snapshots of the people on a user's calendar. The snapshots provide more than just information, surfacing relevant details and providing critical context, and making conversations deeper and richer.

It creates a dossier on each particular person, including updates from all of their social networks that Refresh supports, as well as public data found on the Internet, and information from the user's linked calendar and email.

Founded in 2011, the company came out of beta almost exactly a year ago. Refresh raised $10 million in financing from Redpoint Ventures, Charles River Ventures and Foundation Capital in October of 2010.

This is the second acquisition for LinkedIn this year. In March the company purchased recruitment solution Careerify for an undisclosed sum in order to build out its recruitment business.

VatorNews has reached out to Refresh for more information on the acquisition. We will update this story if we learn more.

(Image source: blog.refresh.io)

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