Here's What LinkedIn Can Do With Pulse

Here's What LinkedIn Can Do With Pulse

So what’s LinkedIn going to do with Pulse now that it has bought the newsreader?

Maybe Jeff Weiner will keep heading down the path Pulse was headed: Trying to figure out how to create mobile magazines filled with other peoples’ content, and how to sell ads against the eyeballs that stuff collects.

And LinkedIn already has a small but growing advertising business â€" its “marketing solutions” group, which includes traditional ads, generated 27 percent of its revenue last quarter.

But my hunch is that Weiner thinks LinkedIn can do a lot with Pulse without spending much time on ads at all.  For instance, what would it look like if LinkedIn sold an iPhone app, or bundled an app with its premium subscriptions, that integrated LinkedIn’s database with other people’s content?

Well, it would look a lot like the one created by LinkedIn content boss Dan Roth â€" back when Roth ran Fortune Magazine’s digital editions.

Here, let Roth show you himself. It gets particularly interesting at the 50-second mark:

Back in 2011, Roth had to work very hard to find the resources at Time Inc. to produce a fairly rudimentary app. (Disclosure: I know Dan. He’s a good dude.) Imagine what he could do at a company with real digital resources.

Now we might find out.