An Overview of LinkedIn

Quick Facts

Summary

Ranked #24th worldwide
Active users 756 M
Type Social networks
Launched date May 5, 2003
Employees 16,000
Headquarters Sunnyvale, California, U.S.
Parent company Microsoft Corporation (2016 - present)

Founders

Reid Hoffman California

Konstantin Guericke

Allen Blue

Jean-Luc Vaillant

Eric Ly

Networks

Brand value In 2020 $4.84 b
Revenue in 2020 $8.05 b
Net loss In 2020 N/A

Data Graphs

via Statista.com

Top Hashtag 2020 & Popular

Top Hashtag 2020

1#india
2 #innovation
3 #management
4 #technology
5 #creativity
6 #careers
7 #humanresources

The Hack

TheRealDeal LinkedIn data listing. (via therealdeal.com)

On Jul 15, 2020, reportedly 130 high-profile Twitter accounts, both verified and unverified ones such as Elon Musk, Joe Biden, Jeff Bezos, Michael Bloomberg, Kim Kardashian West và Bill Gates were compromised by outside parties to promote a bitcoin scam.

Within minutes from the initial tweets, 12 bitcoins from over 320 transactions had already taken place on one of the wallet addresses, and bitcoin to a value of more than US$118,000.

Hackers orchestrated a series of social engineering attacks against Twitter staff that had access to the internal administrative tools that Twitter can use to recover and reset accounts.

Three individuals were arrested by authorities on Jul 31, 2020 and charged with wire fraud, money laundering, identity theft, and unauthorized computer access related to the scam.

Original Idea

The company was founded in Dec 2002 by Reid Hoffman and founding team members from PayPal and Socialnet.com. In Feb 2008, LinkedIn launched a mobile version of the site.

LinkedIn leads a diversified business with revenues from membership subscriptions, advertising sales, and recruitment solutions under the leadership of Ryan Roslansky.

In Dec 2016, Microsoft completed its acquisition of LinkedIn, bringing together the world’s leading professional cloud and the world’s leading professional network.

Brief History

2002

Dec LinkedIn was founded by Reid Hoffman and 4 other friends.

2003

Oct Sequoia Capital leads the Series A investment in the company.

2004

Aug 1M users.

2005

Aug LinkedIn Business Accounts.

2006

Mar LinkedIn achieves its first month of profitability.

2007

Feb Dan Nye becomes CEO of LinkedIn, and Reid Hoffman moves from CEO to chairman and president.

Apr 10M users.

May LinkedIn launches "who's been viewing your profile" feature.

Dec LinkedIn launched the Intelligent Applications Platform.

2008

Feb LinkedIn launched a mobile version of the site.

Apr LinkedIn launched the "People You May Know" feature.

Jun Sequoia Capital, Greylock Partners, and other venture capital firms purchased a 5% stake in the company for $53M, giving the company a post-money valuation of approximately $1B.

Sep LinkedIn launched targeted advertising.

2009

Dec LinkedIn opened an office in India and says that 50% of its user base is now international.

2010

Mar LinkedIn opened an International Headquarters in Dublin, Ireland.

Jul Received a $20M investment from Tiger Global Management LLC at a valuation of approximately $2B.

Aug LinkedIn announces its first acquisition, mSpoke, for its "adaptive personalization engine". The acquisition was for $0.6M.

Sep LinkedIn acquired ChoiceVendor for $3.9M.

2011

Jan Acquired CardMunch for $1.7M.

May LinkedIn IPOs and traded its first shares under the NYSE symbol "LNKD", at $45 per share.

Jul LinkedIn launched a new feature allowing companies to include an "Apply with LinkedIn" button on job listing pages.

Oct Acquired Connected, a social customer relationship management service.

Acquired IndexTank, a social search service.

2012

Feb LinkedIn announces that it will acquire Rapportive.

May Acquired SlideShare for $119M.

Jun LinkedIn falls victim to a hacking attempt that resulted in 6.5 million hashed passwords leaked.

Oct LinkedIn launched the LinkedIn Influencers program.

2013

Apr LinkedIn acquires Pulse for $90M.

Jul LinkedIn announces their Sponsored Updates.

Sep A class action lawsuit is filed against LinkedIn, accusing it of automatically sending invitations to contacts in a user's email address book without permission.

2014

Feb Acquired Bright.com for $120M.

Apr LinkedIn was launched in China, with the Chinese language.

LinkedIn leased 222 Second Street, a 26-story building under construction in San Francisco's SoMa district, to accommodate up to 2,500 of its employees.

Jul Acquired Newsle; Bizo for $175M.

2015

Mar Acquired Careerify.

Apr Acquired Refresh.io.

Acquired Lynda.com for $1.5B.

May LinkedIn adds an analytics tool to its publishing platform.

Jul Acquired Newsle; Bizo for $175M.

2016

Feb LinkedIn acquires Connectifier.

LinkedIn's shares drop 43.6% within a single day following an earnings report, down to $108.38 per share.

Jun Microsoft bought LinkedIn for $26.2B.

Jul Acquired PointDrive.

Sep Launched three India products: LinkedIn Lite; LinkedIn Placements; and Starter Pack.

Launched LinkedIn Learning; Open Candidates.

Nov LinkedIn begins to be blocked in Russia.

2017

Jun The Russian government requires Google and Apple to remove the LinkedIn app from their Russian app stores.

LinkedIn's new desktop version was introduced.

Apr 500M users.

2018

Jun LinkedIn introduced Kudos.

2019

Feb LinkedIn Live was launched to individual users.

Apr LinkedIn introduced four new Reactions: celebrate, love, insightful and curious.

Oct Launched LinkedIn Events.

Nov LinkedIn launched the feature Open for Business.

2020

Apr The ‘Support’ Reactions were introduced.

May Launched LinkedIn Polls.

Jun Jeff Weiner became executive chairman after 11 years in the role. Ryan Roslansky took over as the new CEO.

Jul LinkedIn announced it laid off 960 employees, about 6 percent of the total workforce, from the talent acquisition and global sales teams.

Oct Launched LinkedIn Stories.

2021

Apr CyberNews claimed that 500M LinkedIn’s accounts have leaked online.

Network Features

Member Profile

Reid Hoffman’s LinkedIn profile. (via linkedin.com)

Your Profile includes details on your job qualifications, employment history, education, skills, a personal photo, experience, volunteering, articles you have posted, and content you have commented on or liked.

The About - A catchy hook, your personal story, your mission, motivation, and skills. Activity - The number of followers you, articles, posts, documents.

The Featured section is part of your personal profile, not on a LinkedIn group or company page. You can feature posts that you’ve authored or re-shared, articles you’ve published on LinkedIn, and even external media like images, documents, and links.

Experience - Professional positions and experience, including jobs, volunteering, military, board of directors, nonprofit, or pro sports.

Education - School and educational information.

Skills - A relevant list of skills on your profile helps others to understand your strengths and improves your likelihood to be found in others' searches.

Accomplishments - Publications, patents, courses, projects, honors & awards, test scores, languages, and organizations.

A recommendation - is a commendation written by a LinkedIn member to recognize your work.

Interests - Influencers, companies, groups, and schools.

LinkedIn Pages

Pagès Group’s LinkedIn Information. (via linkedin.com)

LinkedIn Pages are pages dedicated to individual companies, organizations, and institutions. They allow LinkedIn members to discover and connect with individual companies and learn more about each organization's brand, products or services, career opportunities, and more.

A LinkedIn Page includes sections like an Overview, About, Posts, Jobs, People, Life, Event, and Video.

LinkedIn Groups

WordPress Linkedin Groups Information. (via linkedin.com)

LinkedIn Groups provide a place for professionals in the same industry or with similar interests to share their insights and experiences, ask for guidance, and build valuable connections.

Connections is a contact you know personally and who you trust on a professional level. This way, you’re both able to see each other’s posts, job updates and anniversaries, photos, public and private shares on your LinkedIn homepage.

When you accept someone’s invitation to connect, you become their 1st-degree connection. Their LinkedIn connections then become your 2nd-degree connections, 3rd-degree, and vice versa.

LinkedIn Teammates helps you better stay up to date with your current teammates on LinkedIn. Once you’ve added in some of your coworkers, LinkedIn will prioritize the updates you see in your feed based on your coworkers' activity, ensuring you won’t miss their posts, updates, shares, and more.

LinkedIn Contacts brings all your address books, emails, and calendars together in one place and keeps them updated. LinkedIn will pull in details from your past conversations and meetings from these sources and get these details directly onto your contact’s profile.

Newsletters are a series of articles you publish regularly. Just like your typical email newsletter, your LinkedIn newsletter should concentrate on the same topic.

The LinkedIn Events is a feature that allows users to create and join professional Events that interest them, such as meetups, online workshops, seminars, and more. LinkedIn members can use the feature to find and join communities, grow their business, network with others, and learn new skills.

Name Pronunciation: Users can record a 10-second audio clip and add it to their profile, so other users can listen to the recording to learn how to correctly pronounce their name.

LinkedIn Kudos allows you to thank people and appreciate their efforts in helping you or your business.

There are 10 kinds of Kudos at the moment on LinkedIn, each represented by a little colorful picture that shows the type of Kudos: Thank You, Going Above and Beyond, Inspirational Leader, Team Player, Great Job, Making Work Fun, Amazing Mentor, Outside the Box Thinker, Great Presentation, and Making an Impact.

Following someone on LinkedIn allows you to see the person's posts and articles on your homepage without being connected to them.

Publish Articles: All members can publish articles about their expertise and interests. It’s shared with your connections and followers in their news feeds, and sometimes through notifications.

Share Document: LinkedIn's document sharing feature lets you upload documents to organic LinkedIn posts from your home page, company page, or group. You have the option to share a PDF, Word document (DOC/DOCX), or PowerPoint presentation (PPT/PPTX). The file size cannot exceed 100MB and 300 pages.

LinkedIn Stories: are 24-hour posts that can be images or videos that can be published to your personal profile or your company profile via your mobile phone.

LinkedIn Live provides a platform for individuals and organizations to broadcast live video content to a LinkedIn Page, profile, or LinkedIn Event. Only members who’ve received approval can become a LinkedIn Live broadcaster.

The LinkedIn Polls feature helps you engage with other members by asking them for their perspectives about various topics, users can create a simple poll with one question with a minimum of two and a maximum of four response options. The poll answers are limited to 30 characters and the questions to 140 characters.

LinkedIn Reactions are a set of expressions that offer members a way to more easily participate in conversations and communicate with their network.

Like - Show interest in or support for your content.

Celebrate - Expresses that you’re celebrating an announcement, congratulating a personal or professional milestone, or praising an accomplishment.

Support - Expresses that you empathize with someone’s experience or support them during a challenging time.

Love - Expresses that the post is heartwarming, resonates with you, or makes you feel an overall sense of appreciation or happiness.

Insightful - Expresses that you thought the post made a great point, offered a new idea, or shared helpful insights or advice.

Curious - Expresses that you’re intrigued by a thought-provoking perspective or question, and you want to learn more.

The Service

LinkedIn is free for a basic membership, but your options are limited. Searches are limited to 100 results, and you can't perform more advanced searches. You can create a portfolio, add people to your professional network, join and create groups, and write blog posts.

LinkedIn Premium is a three-tiered system that includes Business, Business Plus, and Pro:

The Business account costs $29.95 per month and allows you three InMails per month, 300 profiles per search, and five folders in the Profile Organizer.

Business Plus costs $49.95 and allows you 10 InMails per month, 500 profiles per search, and 25 folders in the Profile Organizer.

The Pro account costs $499.95 per month, allows you 50 InMails per month, 700 profiles per search, and 25 folders in the Profile Organizer.

Sources

Source

Wikipedia en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LinkedIn

LinkedIn linkedin.com/help/linkedin

Statista statista.com