LinkedIn
Encyclopedia
LinkedIn (icon) is a business-related social networking site
. Founded in December 2002 and launched in May 2003, it is mainly used for professional networking. , LinkedIn reports more than 120 million registered users in more than 200 countries and territories. The site is available in English, French, German, Italian, Portuguese, Spanish, Romanian, Russian, Turkish and Japanese. Quantcast
reports LinkedIn has 21.4 million monthly unique U.S. visitors and 47.6 million globally. In June 2011, LinkedIn had 33.9 million unique visitors, up 63 percent from a year earlier and surpassing MySpace
. LinkedIn filed for an initial public offering
in January 2011 and traded its first shares on May 19, 2011, under the NYSE symbol "LNKD".
executive. The company was founded by Reid Hoffman
and founding team members from PayPal
and Socialnet.com (Allen Blue, Eric Ly, Jean-Luc Vaillant, Lee Hower, Konstantin Guericke, Stephen Beitzel, David Eves, Ian McNish, Yan Pujante, and Chris Saccheri)
Founder Reid Hoffman, previously CEO of LinkedIn, is now Chairman of the Board. Bhushan Kasvekar is Vice President of Products. LinkedIn is headquartered in Mountain View, California
, with offices in Omaha
, Chicago, New York, London and Dublin. It is funded by Sequoia Capital
, Greylock, Bain Capital Ventures
, Bessemer Venture Partners
and the European Founders Fund. LinkedIn reached profitability in March 2006. Through January 2011, the company had received a total of $103 million of investment.
In 2003, Sequoia Capital led the Series A investment in the company. In June 2008, Sequoia Capital, Greylock Partners, and other venture capital
firms purchased a 5% stake in the company for $53 million, giving the company a post-money valuation
of approximately $1 billion.
In June 2010, LinkedIn announced it would be opening up a European headquarters in Dublin, Ireland.
In July 2010, Tiger Global Management LLC purchased a 1% stake in the company for $20 million at a valuation of approximately $2 billion.
In August 2010, LinkedIn announced the acquisition of Mspoke. It is the company's first acquisition for an undisclosed amount. This acquisition aims to help LinkedIn users do more than just find a job, increase users' activity and improve its 1% premium subscription ratio.
In October 2010 Silicon Valley Insider ranked the company No. 10 on its Top 100 List of most valuable start ups. As of December 2010, the company was valued at $1.575 billion in private markets.
LinkedIn filed for an initial public offering (IPO) on January 27, 2011. and the IPO occurred on May 19. Shares, initially priced at $45, rose to $122.70 in the first day of trading.
The stock closed up 109% in its first day of trading, making it the fifth-largest first day gainer in the post bubble era.
(35 million) and XING
(10 million). The membership grows by approximately two new members every second. About half of the members are in the United States and 11 million are from Europe. With 3 million users, India has the fastest-growing network of users as of 2009. The Netherlands has the highest adoption rate per capita outside the US at 30%. LinkedIn recently reached 4 million users in UK, 1 million in Spain, and nearly 1 million in Pakistan. (According to Alexa, LinkedIn is the 10th most visited website in Pakistan.)
As of March 2011 the service had 44 million users in the US and 56 million outside.
As of October 2011, LinkedIn has over 14 million students and recent college graduates as members.
This list of connections can then be used in a number of ways:
The "gated-access approach" (where contact with any professional requires either a preexisting relationship, or the intervention of a contact of theirs) is intended to build trust among the service's users. LinkedIn participates in the EU's International Safe Harbor Privacy Principles.
The feature LinkedIn Answers
, similar to Yahoo! Answers
, allows users to ask questions for the community to answer. This feature is free and the main difference from the latter is that questions are potentially more business-oriented, and the identity of the people asking and answering questions is known.
Another LinkedIn feature is LinkedIn Polls.
In mid-2008, LinkedIn launched LinkedIn DirectAds as a form of sponsored advertising.
In October 2008, LinkedIn revealed plans to opening its social network of 30 million professionals globally as a potential sample for business-to-business research. It is testing a potential social-network revenue model-research that to some appears more promising than advertising.
Reading List that allows LinkedIn members to display books they are reading, a connection to Tripit, and a Six Apart
, WordPress
and TypePad
application that allows members to display their latest blog postings within their LinkedIn profile.
In November 2010, LinkedIn allowed businesses to list products and services on company profile pages; it also permitted LinkedIn members to "recommend" products and services and write reviews.
In January 2011, LinkedIn acquired CardMunch, a mobile app maker that scans business cards and converts into contacts. LinkedIn plans to integrate this functionality into their services in the near future. In August of 2011 LinkedIn revamped its mobile applications on the iPhone, Android and HTML5. Mobile page views of the application have increased roughly 400% year over year according to CEO Jeff Weiner.
Groups support a limited form of discussion area, moderated by the group owners and managers. Since groups offer the ability to reach a wide audience without so easily falling foul of anti-spam solutions, there is a constant stream of spam postings, and there now exist a range of firms who offer a spamming service for this very purpose. LinkedIn has devised a few mechanisms to reduce the volume of spam, but recently took the decision to remove the ability of group owners to inspect the email address of new members in order to determine if they were spammers.
Groups may be private, accessible to members only or may be open to Internet users in general to read, though they must join in order to post messages.
In July 2011, LinkedIn launched a new feature allowing companies to include an "Apply with LinkedIn" button on job listing pages. The new plugin will allow potential employees to apply for positions using their LinkedIn profiles as resumes. All applications will also be saved under a "Saved Jobs" tab.
claimed that "LinkedIn has become the de facto tool for professional networking." Irish journalist James O'Sullivan commented in the Evening Echo
, an award-winning regional newspaper in the Republic of Ireland, where the company has its European headquarters, that "LinkedIn.com, a business-orientated networking site, can be an ideal way for professionals to present an online profile of themselves...Unlike social networking sites, [with] LinkedIn you're outlining all your credentials; presenting the professional rather than the personal you. Considering the sheer vastness of the digital space, the potential for building up a solid base of contacts and fostering new business relationships is boundless."
es assigned to Syria. As company's Customer Support stated, services provided by them are subject to US export and re-export control laws and regulations and "As such, and as a matter of corporate policy, we do not allow member accounts or access to our site from Cuba, Iran, North Korea, Sudan, or Syria."
Cuba, Iran, Sudan and Syria are not available in the list of countries that LinkedIn users can select as one's location. However, as of April 2010, North Korea is still present there.
In China, LinkedIn is called as LINKEYIN by net friends, because it's a compound word, it's combined from Linked and In. According to the pronunciation and meaning, The word Linked can be translated to LINKE, and the word In can be translated to YIN. The word LINKEYIN is more easy to understand for Chinese people.
In February 2011 it was reported that LinkedIn was being blocked in China after calls for a "Jasmine Revolution". It was speculated to have been blocked because it is an easy way for dissidents to access Twitter, which had been blocked previously. After a day of being blocked, LinkedIn access was restored in China.
projects built by the group. Notable among these projects is Project Voldemort, a distributed
key-value structured storage
system with low-latency
similar in purpose to Amazon.com's Dynamo
and Google
's BigTable
.
Social network service
A social networking service is an online service, platform, or site that focuses on building and reflecting of social networks or social relations among people, who, for example, share interests and/or activities. A social network service consists of a representation of each user , his/her social...
. Founded in December 2002 and launched in May 2003, it is mainly used for professional networking. , LinkedIn reports more than 120 million registered users in more than 200 countries and territories. The site is available in English, French, German, Italian, Portuguese, Spanish, Romanian, Russian, Turkish and Japanese. Quantcast
Quantcast
Quantcast is a California based company that provides publishers and marketers with the ability to understand, deliver and reach their best audiences at a massive scale...
reports LinkedIn has 21.4 million monthly unique U.S. visitors and 47.6 million globally. In June 2011, LinkedIn had 33.9 million unique visitors, up 63 percent from a year earlier and surpassing MySpace
MySpace
Myspace is a social networking service owned by Specific Media LLC and pop star Justin Timberlake. Myspace launched in August 2003 and is headquartered in Beverly Hills, California. In August 2011, Myspace had 33.1 million unique U.S. visitors....
. LinkedIn filed for an initial public offering
Initial public offering
An initial public offering or stock market launch, is the first sale of stock by a private company to the public. It can be used by either small or large companies to raise expansion capital and become publicly traded enterprises...
in January 2011 and traded its first shares on May 19, 2011, under the NYSE symbol "LNKD".
Company background
LinkedIn's CEO is Jeff Weiner, previously a Yahoo! Inc.Yahoo!
Yahoo! Inc. is an American multinational internet corporation headquartered in Sunnyvale, California, United States. The company is perhaps best known for its web portal, search engine , Yahoo! Directory, Yahoo! Mail, Yahoo! News, Yahoo! Groups, Yahoo! Answers, advertising, online mapping ,...
executive. The company was founded by Reid Hoffman
Reid Hoffman
Reid G. Hoffman is an American entrepreneur and venture capitalist. Hoffman is best known as the co-founder of LinkedIn, a social network used primarily for business connections and job searching.-Early education and career:...
and founding team members from PayPal
PayPal
PayPal is an American-based global e-commerce business allowing payments and money transfers to be made through the Internet. Online money transfers serve as electronic alternatives to paying with traditional paper methods, such as checks and money orders....
and Socialnet.com (Allen Blue, Eric Ly, Jean-Luc Vaillant, Lee Hower, Konstantin Guericke, Stephen Beitzel, David Eves, Ian McNish, Yan Pujante, and Chris Saccheri)
Founder Reid Hoffman, previously CEO of LinkedIn, is now Chairman of the Board. Bhushan Kasvekar is Vice President of Products. LinkedIn is headquartered in Mountain View, California
Mountain View, California
-Downtown:Mountain View has a pedestrian-friendly downtown centered on Castro Street. The downtown area consists of the seven blocks of Castro Street from the Downtown Mountain View Station transit center in the north to the intersection with El Camino Real in the south...
, with offices in Omaha
Omaha
Omaha may refer to:*Omaha , a Native American tribe that currently resides in the northeastern part of the U.S. state of Nebraska-Places:United States* Omaha, Nebraska* Omaha, Arkansas* Omaha, Georgia* Omaha, Illinois* Omaha, Texas...
, Chicago, New York, London and Dublin. It is funded by Sequoia Capital
Sequoia Capital
Sequoia Capital is a Californian venture capital firm located on Sand Hill Road in Menlo Park, California. The Wall Street Journal has called Sequoia Capital "one of the highest-caliber venture firms", and noted that it is "one of Silicon Valley's most influential venture-capital firms"...
, Greylock, Bain Capital Ventures
Bain Capital Ventures
Bain Capital Ventures is the Boston-based venture capital affiliate of Bain Capital. Bain Capital Ventures' history dates back to 1984, with investments in over 110 early and growth stage companies such as Staples, DoubleClick, Aspect Development, Shopping.com, Taleo Corporation, SolarWinds,...
, Bessemer Venture Partners
Bessemer Venture Partners
Bessemer Venture Partners is a private venture capital firm with offices in Silicon Valley, New York, Massachusetts, Israel, China, and India.Bessemer Venture Partners is the longest-standing venture capital practice in the United States...
and the European Founders Fund. LinkedIn reached profitability in March 2006. Through January 2011, the company had received a total of $103 million of investment.
In 2003, Sequoia Capital led the Series A investment in the company. In June 2008, Sequoia Capital, Greylock Partners, and other venture capital
Venture capital
Venture capital is financial capital provided to early-stage, high-potential, high risk, growth startup companies. The venture capital fund makes money by owning equity in the companies it invests in, which usually have a novel technology or business model in high technology industries, such as...
firms purchased a 5% stake in the company for $53 million, giving the company a post-money valuation
Post-money valuation
Post-money valuation is the value of a company after an investment has been made. This value is equal to the sum of the pre-money valuation and the amount of new equity....
of approximately $1 billion.
In June 2010, LinkedIn announced it would be opening up a European headquarters in Dublin, Ireland.
In July 2010, Tiger Global Management LLC purchased a 1% stake in the company for $20 million at a valuation of approximately $2 billion.
In August 2010, LinkedIn announced the acquisition of Mspoke. It is the company's first acquisition for an undisclosed amount. This acquisition aims to help LinkedIn users do more than just find a job, increase users' activity and improve its 1% premium subscription ratio.
In October 2010 Silicon Valley Insider ranked the company No. 10 on its Top 100 List of most valuable start ups. As of December 2010, the company was valued at $1.575 billion in private markets.
LinkedIn filed for an initial public offering (IPO) on January 27, 2011. and the IPO occurred on May 19. Shares, initially priced at $45, rose to $122.70 in the first day of trading.
The stock closed up 109% in its first day of trading, making it the fifth-largest first day gainer in the post bubble era.
Membership
With 116 million users, LinkedIn is ahead of its competitors ViadeoViadeo
Viadeo is a Web 2.0 professional social network with over 35 million members worldwide in 2010, and a membership base that was growing by more than one million per month in 2009. Members include business owners, entrepreneurs and managers from a diverse range of enterprises...
(35 million) and XING
Xing
Xing may refer to:* an abbreviation for crossing, primarily used in North America* Qiao Xing Universal Telephone Inc. * XING, a social network platform* Xing County, in Shanxi, China* Xing - A Korean boyband...
(10 million). The membership grows by approximately two new members every second. About half of the members are in the United States and 11 million are from Europe. With 3 million users, India has the fastest-growing network of users as of 2009. The Netherlands has the highest adoption rate per capita outside the US at 30%. LinkedIn recently reached 4 million users in UK, 1 million in Spain, and nearly 1 million in Pakistan. (According to Alexa, LinkedIn is the 10th most visited website in Pakistan.)
As of March 2011 the service had 44 million users in the US and 56 million outside.
As of October 2011, LinkedIn has over 14 million students and recent college graduates as members.
Features
One purpose of the site is to allow registered users to maintain a list of contact details of people with whom they have some level of relationship, called Connections. Users can invite anyone (whether a site user or not) to become a connection. However, if the recipient of an invitation selects "I don't know", this counts against the person inviting them, and after five such "IDKs" a member cannot invite another to connect without first supplying their recipient mail address.This list of connections can then be used in a number of ways:
- A contact network is built up consisting of their direct connections, the connections of each of their connections (termed second-degree connections) and also the connections of second-degree connections (termed third-degree connections). This can be used to gain an introduction to someone a person wishes to know through a mutual contact.
- It can then be used to find jobs, people and business opportunities recommended by someone in one's contact network.
- Employers can list jobs and search for potential candidates.
- Job seekers can review the profile of hiring managers and discover which of their existing contacts can introduce them.
- Users can post their own photos and view photos of others to aid in identification.
- Users can now follow different companies and can get notification about the new joining and offers available.
- Users can save (i.e. bookmark) jobs which they would like to apply for.
The "gated-access approach" (where contact with any professional requires either a preexisting relationship, or the intervention of a contact of theirs) is intended to build trust among the service's users. LinkedIn participates in the EU's International Safe Harbor Privacy Principles.
The feature LinkedIn Answers
LinkedIn Answers
LinkedIn Answers is a knowledge market service by LinkedIn. It is somewhat similar to 3form Free Knowledge Exchange, Naver Knowledge iN, Yahoo! Answers, and other knowledge markets...
, similar to Yahoo! Answers
Yahoo! Answers
Yahoo! Answers is a community-driven question-and-answer site or a knowledge market launched by Yahoo! on June 28, 2005 that allows users to both submit questions to be answered and answer questions asked by other users...
, allows users to ask questions for the community to answer. This feature is free and the main difference from the latter is that questions are potentially more business-oriented, and the identity of the people asking and answering questions is known.
Another LinkedIn feature is LinkedIn Polls.
In mid-2008, LinkedIn launched LinkedIn DirectAds as a form of sponsored advertising.
In October 2008, LinkedIn revealed plans to opening its social network of 30 million professionals globally as a potential sample for business-to-business research. It is testing a potential social-network revenue model-research that to some appears more promising than advertising.
Applications
In October 2008, LinkedIn enabled an "applications platform" that allows other online services to be embedded within a member's profile page. Among the initial applications were an AmazonAmazon.com
Amazon.com, Inc. is a multinational electronic commerce company headquartered in Seattle, Washington, United States. It is the world's largest online retailer. Amazon has separate websites for the following countries: United States, Canada, United Kingdom, Germany, France, Italy, Spain, Japan, and...
Reading List that allows LinkedIn members to display books they are reading, a connection to Tripit, and a Six Apart
Six Apart
Six Apart Ltd., sometimes abbreviated 6A, is a software company known for creating the Movable Type blogware, TypePad blog hosting service, and Vox. The company also is the former owner of LiveJournal. Six Apart is headquartered in Tokyo and is planning to open a new, U.S.-based office in New York...
, WordPress
WordPress
WordPress is a free and open source blogging tool and publishing platform powered by PHP and MySQL. It is often customized into a content management system . It has many features including a plug-in architecture and a template system. WordPress is used by over 14.7% of Alexa Internet's "top 1...
and TypePad
TypePad
TypePad is a blogging service from company Say Media . Originally launched in October 2003, TypePad is based on Six Apart's Movable Type platform, and shares technology with Movable Type such as templates and APIs, but is marketed to non-technical users and includes additional features like...
application that allows members to display their latest blog postings within their LinkedIn profile.
In November 2010, LinkedIn allowed businesses to list products and services on company profile pages; it also permitted LinkedIn members to "recommend" products and services and write reviews.
Mobile
A mobile version of the site was launched in February 2008 which gives access to a reduced feature set over a mobile phone. The mobile service is available in six languages: Chinese, English, French, German, Japanese and Spanish.In January 2011, LinkedIn acquired CardMunch, a mobile app maker that scans business cards and converts into contacts. LinkedIn plans to integrate this functionality into their services in the near future. In August of 2011 LinkedIn revamped its mobile applications on the iPhone, Android and HTML5. Mobile page views of the application have increased roughly 400% year over year according to CEO Jeff Weiner.
Groups
LinkedIn also supports the formation of interest groups, and as of March 24, 2011 there are 870,612 such groups whose membership varies from 1 to 377,000. The majority of the largest groups are employment related, although a very wide range of topics are covered mainly around professional and career issues, and there are currently 128,000 groups for both academic and corporate alumni.Groups support a limited form of discussion area, moderated by the group owners and managers. Since groups offer the ability to reach a wide audience without so easily falling foul of anti-spam solutions, there is a constant stream of spam postings, and there now exist a range of firms who offer a spamming service for this very purpose. LinkedIn has devised a few mechanisms to reduce the volume of spam, but recently took the decision to remove the ability of group owners to inspect the email address of new members in order to determine if they were spammers.
Groups may be private, accessible to members only or may be open to Internet users in general to read, though they must join in order to post messages.
Job Listings
LinkedIn allows users to research companies with which they may be interested in working. When typing the name of a given company in the search box, statistics about the company are provided. These may include the ratio of female to male employees, the percentage of the most common titles/positions held within the company, the location of the company's headquarters and offices, or a list of present and former employees.In July 2011, LinkedIn launched a new feature allowing companies to include an "Apply with LinkedIn" button on job listing pages. The new plugin will allow potential employees to apply for positions using their LinkedIn profiles as resumes. All applications will also be saved under a "Saved Jobs" tab.
Reception
LinkedIn has received a generally positive reception from critics. Online trade publication TechRepublicTechRepublic
TechRepublic is an online trade publication and social community for IT professionals, with advice on best practices and tools for the day-to-day needs of IT decision-makers....
claimed that "LinkedIn has become the de facto tool for professional networking." Irish journalist James O'Sullivan commented in the Evening Echo
Evening Echo
The Evening Echo is an Irish evening newspaper based in Cork. It is distributed throughout the province of Munster, although it is primarily read in its base city of Cork. In Limerick, an altered local edition of the paper is sold...
, an award-winning regional newspaper in the Republic of Ireland, where the company has its European headquarters, that "LinkedIn.com, a business-orientated networking site, can be an ideal way for professionals to present an online profile of themselves...Unlike social networking sites, [with] LinkedIn you're outlining all your credentials; presenting the professional rather than the personal you. Considering the sheer vastness of the digital space, the potential for building up a solid base of contacts and fostering new business relationships is boundless."
International Reception
In 2009 Syrian users reported that LinkedIn server stopped accepting connections originating from IP addressIP address
An Internet Protocol address is a numerical label assigned to each device participating in a computer network that uses the Internet Protocol for communication. An IP address serves two principal functions: host or network interface identification and location addressing...
es assigned to Syria. As company's Customer Support stated, services provided by them are subject to US export and re-export control laws and regulations and "As such, and as a matter of corporate policy, we do not allow member accounts or access to our site from Cuba, Iran, North Korea, Sudan, or Syria."
Cuba, Iran, Sudan and Syria are not available in the list of countries that LinkedIn users can select as one's location. However, as of April 2010, North Korea is still present there.
In China, LinkedIn is called as LINKEYIN by net friends, because it's a compound word, it's combined from Linked and In. According to the pronunciation and meaning, The word Linked can be translated to LINKE, and the word In can be translated to YIN. The word LINKEYIN is more easy to understand for Chinese people.
In February 2011 it was reported that LinkedIn was being blocked in China after calls for a "Jasmine Revolution". It was speculated to have been blocked because it is an easy way for dissidents to access Twitter, which had been blocked previously. After a day of being blocked, LinkedIn access was restored in China.
SNA LinkedIn
The Search, Network, and Analytics team at LinkedIn has a web site that hosts the open sourceOpen source
The term open source describes practices in production and development that promote access to the end product's source materials. Some consider open source a philosophy, others consider it a pragmatic methodology...
projects built by the group. Notable among these projects is Project Voldemort, a distributed
Distributed computing
Distributed computing is a field of computer science that studies distributed systems. A distributed system consists of multiple autonomous computers that communicate through a computer network. The computers interact with each other in order to achieve a common goal...
key-value structured storage
Structured storage
COM Structured Storage is a technology developed by Microsoft as part of its Windows operating system for storing hierarchical data within a single file...
system with low-latency
Latency (engineering)
Latency is a measure of time delay experienced in a system, the precise definition of which depends on the system and the time being measured. Latencies may have different meaning in different contexts.-Packet-switched networks:...
similar in purpose to Amazon.com's Dynamo
Dynamo (storage system)
Dynamo is a highly available, proprietary key-value structured storage system or a distributed data store. It has properties of both databases and distributed hash tables...
and Google
Google
Google Inc. is an American multinational public corporation invested in Internet search, cloud computing, and advertising technologies. Google hosts and develops a number of Internet-based services and products, and generates profit primarily from advertising through its AdWords program...
's BigTable
BigTable
BigTable is a compressed, high performance, and proprietary database system built on Google File System , Chubby Lock Service, SSTable and a few other Google technologies; it is currently not distributed nor is it used outside of Google, although Google offers access to it as part of their Google...
.
See also
- Business network
- Information Routing GroupInformation Routing GroupAn Information Routing Group is a component of social networks consisting of a semi-infinite set of similar interlocking and overlapping groups...
- List of social networking websites
- Reputation systemReputation systemA reputation system computes and publishes reputation scores for a set of objects within a community or domain, based on a collection of opinions that other entities hold about the objects...
s - Social networkSocial networkA social network is a social structure made up of individuals called "nodes", which are tied by one or more specific types of interdependency, such as friendship, kinship, common interest, financial exchange, dislike, sexual relationships, or relationships of beliefs, knowledge or prestige.Social...
- Social softwareSocial softwareSocial software applications include communication tools and interactive tools. Communication tools typically handle the capturing, storing and presentation of communication, usually written but increasingly including audio and video as well. Interactive tools handle mediated interactions between a...
External links
- SEC FORM S-1 REGISTRATION STATEMENT – LinkedIn's IPO filing