Well THAT is interesting. Slideshare has discontinued its freemium model, where free users are spun up to paid PRO users.
Given that LinkedIn is a freemium model, and owns Slideshare, it seems like double jeopardy to be charging users twice – if you have aspirations to grow,
LinkedIn has been pushing its Portfolio features, and to get traction in a multimedia world, it makes complete sense to remove the friction that exists for people to fully use Slideshare to share pro content.
And LinkedIn is no dummy – people want data – they want to know who has viewed their profile. And now their sales collateral and subject-matter expert materials.
TechCrunch has a good article on the matter;
