The biggest social media acquisition was Microsoft 's acquisition of LinkedIn for $26.2 billion back in 2016, and this record was about to be broken 5 years later in 2021 with PayPal's intent
After the COVID pandemic, PayPal faced tremendous growth due to the surge of ecommerce payments giving PayPal a market cap of around $320 billion - a 35% growth in 12 months (today, their market cap sits at around $70 billion, but let’s rewind to the good days for the purpose of this post) In enjoying this growth, PayPal didn’t shy away from the acquisition/investment game and acquired 7 companies between 2020 to 2022 while investing in 22 other companies in that same duration. Here’s a list of the companies they acquired in 2 years: - HoneyScience (fintech / enterprise SaaS) acquisition in 2020 for $4 billion - Venmo (fintech) acquisition in 2020 for $800 million - Curve (fintech) acquisition in 2020 for $200 million - Chargehound, a PayPal company(fintech) acquisition in 2021 for an undisclosed amount - HappyReturns (logistics) acquisition in 2021 for an undisclosed amount - Paidy (fintech) acquisition in 2021 for $2.7 billion - Pinterest canceled acquisition in 2021 for $45 billion - All of Us (fintech/ad-tech) acquisition in 2022 for an undisclosed amount Now, to the canceled acquisition of Pinterest. PayPal’s original strategy was to enable the company to capture more e-commerce growth and would also allow Pinterest to access PayPal’s massive database while hedging the risk of losing their co-founder, Evan Sharp and facing a slowdown in user growth. While on paper, this seemed like a win-win, but PayPal’s shareholders had a different take. "Running a platform primarily focused on driving user engagement and advertising would require PayPal to use muscles it isn’t accustomed to using.” the shareholders advised as per a note from a researcher, and this led PayPal’s biggest shareholders (Ebay, Fidelity, JP Morgan, and many more) to put a stop on the transaction due to the integration risks and cultural risks PayPal might face with pursuing an investment in the social media platform. With that, the action was still beneficial for PayPal; when PayPal disclosed its intent to acquire Pinterest, their shares rose 6.2% in pre-market trading and Pinterest fell 10% ($52.10 per share) even when PayPal disclosed it would acquire the company for $70 a share. So, long story short: Microsoft buying LinkedIn still holds the record of the biggest acquisition in the history of social media. I wonder who'll be next and more importantly, I wonder what the future of social media platforms will be with the current content control and the unfolding story of the Congress with Tiktok. Falak Angels is leading such content with frequent articles and research reports coming up - follow to stay up to date.The biggest social media acquisition was Microsoft 's acquisition of LinkedIn for $26.2 billion back in 2016, and this record was about to be broken 5 years later in 2021 with PayPal's intent to buy Pinterest for $45 billion.. That was until the deal went bust.
