History Of LinkedIn

Online and mobile, LinkedIn is a social media network with an emphasis on professional networking and job searches. In 2003, Reid Hoffman and Eric Ly debuted it on May 5th.Microsoft has bought LinkedIn in its entirety since December 2016. Users may upload resumes and search for employment opportunities on the site, which is mostly used for professional networking and career advancement. Starting in 2015, the majority of LinkedIn's income was generated by selling member data to sales and recruiting firms. The business also launched its own advertising platform, LinkedIn Ads, where companies could place ads on the LinkedIn network.With users in over 200 countries and territories, LinkedIn boasts over a billion registered members.

Employers and workers alike may use LinkedIn to build professional networks online via profile creation and connection building. Members have the ability to extend invitations to anybody, regardless of membership status, to join as a connection. LinkedIn isn't only for online networking; it also allows users to host real gatherings, contribute to groups, post jobs, share media, and more.

The original members of the PayPal and Socialnet.com founding teams (Allen Blue, Eric Ly, Jean-Luc Vaillant, Lee Hower, Konstantin Guericke, Stephen Beitzel, David Eves, Ian McNish, Yan Pujante, and Chris Saccheri) and Reid Hoffman established the firm in December 2002.

The company's Series A investment was spearheaded by Sequoia Capital towards the end of 2003.One million LinkedIn members were attained in August 2004. A month of profitability for LinkedIn came in March of 2006.The LinkedIn user base hit 10 million in April 2007.Launching its mobile site in February 2008, LinkedIn

The business was valued at over $1 billion with the investment of $53 million by Sequoia Capital, Greylock Partners, and other venture capital companies for a 5% share in June 2008.The LinkedIn Asia-Pacific team expanded in November 2009 with the opening of an office in Mumbai, followed shortly by one in Sydney. In 2010, LinkedIn announced its first acquisition, Mspoke, and increased its 1% premium subscription ratio. It also obtained $20 million in financing from Tiger Global Management LLC, valuing the company at over $2 billion. LinkedIn also launched its international headquarters in Dublin, Ireland in the same year.

Among the 100 most valued start-ups in October of that year, Silicon Valley Insider placed the firm at number ten.The private markets valued the firm at $1.575 billion by December.

In 2009, LinkedIn began operations in India. During the first year, the company focused on learning about Indian professionals and teaching members how to use LinkedIn to further their careers.

January 2011 was the filing month for LinkedIn's first public offering. On May 19, 2011, the firm began trading its first shares on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) under the ticker code "LNKD" for $45 (~$60.00 in 2023) each.On the first day of trading on the New York Stock Exchange, LinkedIn shares surged as high as 171% and ended the day at $94.25, which is almost 109% more than the initial public offering price. The site's infrastructure was updated shortly after the IPO to facilitate faster revision-release cycles.Ad income on LinkedIn was $154.6 million in 2011, more than Twitter's $139.5 million. Due to the company's growing success in the social media realm, LinkedIn's profits in the fourth quarter of 2011 skyrocketed.Compared to 500 in 2010, LinkedIn now employed over 2,100 full-time workers.

A 26-story skyscraper in San Francisco's SoMa area, 222 Second Street, was leased by LinkedIn in April 2014. The company plans to house up to 2,500 workers in the building.for a period of ten years. As of January 2016, there were 1,250 workers working out of San Francisco. The plan was to consolidate all of their departments into one facility, uniting the marketing and sales teams with the R&D department.

They began moving in in March 2016.Shares of LinkedIn fell 43.6% in a single day to $108.38 in February 2016, after an earnings release. On that particular day, LinkedIn's market value dropped by $10 billion.

Because the company did not comply with Russian law passed in 2015, which mandates that social media networks retain the personal data of Russian people on computers located in Russia, the Russian government barred access to LinkedIn in 2016.

The acquisition of LinkedIn by Microsoft for $26.2 billion, or $196 per share, was announced in June 2016. Until Microsoft acquired Activision Blizzard in 2022, it was the company's biggest purchase to that point. A debt-financed purchase would be completed with full funds in hand. If Microsoft approves, LinkedIn may "retain its distinct brand, culture and independence" and CEO Weiner can continue in his role; he will report to Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella. Experts speculated that Microsoft saw a chance to improve the professional network system's integration with its goods by including LinkedIn into its Office product line. December 8, 2016 was the closing date of the transaction.

With the announcement of 200 more jobs in its Dublin office made towards the end of 2016, LinkedIn's overall staff count would reach 1,200.Of all B2B marketers, 94% have used LinkedIn to disseminate information since 2017.

The latest desktop version of LinkedIn was released not long after Microsoft acquired the company.With this update, we aimed to unify the mobile and desktop user experiences. The previously released mobile app has several modifications made to it based on user input. We eliminated features that were hardly utilized. As an example, we no longer provide functionality like contact tagging and filtering.

Freelancers may now be found on LinkedIn thanks to the worldwide debut of the Open for Business feature in 2019. The same year also saw the debut of LinkedIn Events.

Jeff Weiner served as executive chairman for 11 years until stepping down as CEO in June 2020. From his role as senior VP of product, Ryan Roslansky transitioned into the role of CEO.Late in July 2020, LinkedIn said that it has laid off 960 people, or around 6% of its overall staff, from its worldwide sales and talent acquisition divisions. The worldwide COVID-19 epidemic, according to CEO Ryan Roslansky's email to all workers, is to blame for the layoffs.

According to CyberNews, 500 million LinkedIn accounts were compromised in April 2021.On the other hand, LinkedIn acknowledged that "We have investigated an alleged set of LinkedIn data that has been posted for sale and have determined that it is actually an aggregation of data from a number of websites and companies."

More than 700 million LinkedIn data were allegedly for sale on a hacker site in June 2021, according to PrivacySharks.LinkedIn clarified thereafter that they did not suffer a breach, but rather scraped data, which is against their TOS.By October of 2021, Microsoft had pulled LinkedIn out of the Chinese market.After bringing in $10.3 billion the previous year, LinkedIn raked in $13.8 billion in 2022.

From nearly 20,000 employees, LinkedIn eliminated 716 jobs in May 2023. The CEO, Ryan Roslansky, said in a letter that the decision was taken to simplify the company's processes. In addition, according to Roslansky, 250 new jobs would be created as a direct consequence of this decision. Furthermore, LinkedIn's local employment applications for China will no longer be supported.

Axios said in June 2024 that LinkedIn was experimenting with a new AI helper for its Premium subscribers.After the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) voiced concerns, LinkedIn temporarily halted the usage of user data from the United Kingdom for training artificial intelligence models in September 2024. Subtly, the site has been collecting data from users all around the world to utilize in AI training. But LinkedIn stopped doing it for UK users after hearing criticism from the ICO. According to an official, LinkedIn has always given users choice over how their data is used, and now users in the UK may choose not to have their data used at all.

Because it "does not have content interesting and appealing to minors," LinkedIn fought against an Australian law that would have banned users under the age of sixteen from using the network in November 2024.