LinkedIn

Unlike other social networks such as Facebook and Myspace, which are often purely recreational, LinkedIn emphasizes a user’s professional connections. Users create profile pages that have a structure similar to a résumé, in that users can summarize their career, advertise their particular skills, and list their education and employment history. Connections are formed between users when one accepts an invitation from another to join his or her network. LinkedIn allows users to further their careers by searching for jobs, finding connections (even at third hand) at a particular company, and receiving recommendations from other users. Membership is free; however, with payment for premium service, users can receive more profiles in their search results and see full profiles of any LinkedIn user.

Venture capitalist Reid Hoffman, product designer Allen Blue, marketing professional Konstantin Guericke, engineer Eric Ly, and engineer Jean-Luc Vaillant founded LinkedIn, and the Web site was launched in 2003. Growth was slow at first. In 2005 LinkedIn introduced services that allowed companies to post job listings and search the network for prospective employees. In addition to these professional services, LinkedIn allows companies to advertise on the site. LinkedIn finally became profitable in 2007. That year LinkedIn had more than 15 million members, and by 2011 LinkedIn had more than 100 million members worldwide. LinkedIn’s initial public offering (IPO) that same year raised $353 million.

In 2016 LinkedIn was acquired by Microsoft for approximately $26 billion. The following year it reported more than 500 million members in about 200 countries.