Last week LinkedIn announced the launch of LinkedIn Learning, a subscription-only online skills training platform, its latest offering to connect and engage its 450 million members. According to LinkedIn CEO Jeff Weiner, this platform and other initiatives announced last week will help the company accelerate its vision to “create economic opportunity for every member of the global workforce.” This vision, of course, is important to Microsoft who is in the process of acquiring LinkedIn for $26.2 billion.

LinkedIn made its own acquisition last year with the $1.5 billion purchase of online learning site Lynda.com which has paved the way for this product. According to the LinkedIn Learning site, more than 9,000 online courses are available 24/7 with 25 new courses being added each week at no extra cost. Training videos are available online, but can also be saved offline for later viewing, and rather than being available through Lynda.com, courses will be viewed directly through LinkedIn.

At launch, LinkedIn is offering courses in three primary areas of interest – Business, Technology and Creative – in a broad range of categories. Here is a sampling of the courses available:

According to TechCrunch, the new eLearning portal is available to LinkedIn Premium subscribers, but LinkedIn will be adding an enterprise tier so employers, organizations and teams can offer training to all of their employees. Employers can track analytics from within LinkedIn to monitor the progress of employees as they take various courses.

Seeking Alpha reports that a number of corporate clients like Box, NBC Universal, Ellie Mae and Viacom are early adopters of training portal. Seeking Alpha also says that LinkedIn will open up the training portal to individual subscribers at the rate of $29.99 a month after a 30-day free trial, or $299.88 if paid annually. How does this equate to new subscription revenue for LinkedIn? If LinkedIn signs up 500,000 members at $299.88 per year, that’s $149.94 million in new revenue, making LinkedIn even more attractive to Microsoft.

Insider Take:

Seeking Alpha points out that, prior to LinkedIn’s acquisition by Microsoft, it steered its members toward Lynda.com for online training. By offering training from within LinkedIn, the professional network can keep subscribers on LinkedIn longer, creating more marketing opportunities for LinkedIn while increasing customer loyalty and perhaps improving subscriber retention.

From a subscription revenue standpoint, this new eLearning platform has the potential to be a huge moneymaker for LinkedIn, particularly as the enterprise tier comes online. LinkedIn is filling a growing need for the latest training and education, creating exceptional value for subscribers. With Microsoft’s backing, LinkedIn has new opportunities to leverage its acquisition of Lynda.com which will, in turn, improve Microsoft’s ROI.