How LinkedIn will invade Windows and Office

It'll soon become harder to avoid LinkedIn's messages if you use Office or Windows.

Microsoft has revealed how it will start to integrate LinkedIn into its own email and other platforms, after European authorities approved its acquisition of the professional social network.

Following the approval, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella wrote in a note on LinkedIn how the social network would be used "to help professionals transform how they work, realise new career opportunities and connect in new ways".

The immediate "integration scenarios" include the use of LinkedIn's logins and network in Microsoft Outlook and Office, as well as letting LinkedIn users draft resums in Word, presumably without switching to the productivity software.

One of the more controversial features will involve showing LinkedIn notifications inside the Windows action centre. While you'll reportedly be able to disable the notifications, it means LinkedIn invitations and messages will pop up directly in Windows, rather than flooding your inbox as they do now.

Other changes include powering LinkedIn's lookup search tools with Active Directory, making LinkedIn Learning tools available across Office 365 and the rest of Windows, and sharing ads between the two.

Nadella said the "top priority is to accelerate LinkedIn's growth" - if you didn't think LinkedIn was aggressive already, it's about to become more so - but the Microsoft CEO believes there's more to the acquisition than network effect.

"We also see a greater opportunity to help ensure that everyone can benefit from digital technology and the new opportunities created by the digital economy," he wrote, adding that the tie-up between the companies will help "people develop new skills online, find new jobs and easily connect and collaborate with colleagues".

Nadella added: "Technology alone will not solve these challenges, but together, working across private and public sectors, we can create more opportunity for everyone to participate and share in economic growth."

Picture: Satya Nadella with LinkedIn CEO Jeff Weiner (right), courtesy of LinkedIn