TechCrunch UK is reporting that:

An unconfirmed rumour has reached me via a reliable source that LinkedIn is in talks with media giant News Corporation over a possible buyout in January 2008.

This kind of move would really make sense given the growing importance of the “Social Graph” and the potential for LinkedIn to play a role in providing the social glue that connects us all.

Given that LinkedIn covers a completely different demographic than MySpace, News Corp could also use an acquisition to extend its scale, content and advertising inventory to another segmented social network.

Maybe this will be the next generation of what it means to be a network where demographically segmented social networks are aggregated under an umbrella network that allows for super scale on the infrastructure.

Via Techmeme.

Technorati Tags: social networking, LinkedIn, News Corp