INTRODUCTION:
What is LinkedIn?
LinkedIn is a career networking and professional networking social network used to look for jobs and display the resume. LinkedIn is a platform where you can post the latest updates to boost up your professional prestige and interact with people all over the world.
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Although LinkedIn is available free of cost, a subscription offers added features such as seminars, online classes, along with intuition into who is viewing or looking for your LinkedIn profile.
Who invented LinkedIn?
LinkedIn was invented by Allen Blue (product designer), Konstantin Guericke (marketing professional), Eric Ly (engineer), Jean-Luc Vaillant (engineer), and particularly Reid Hoffman who was the venture capitalist.
When was LinkedIn invented?
A business-oriented website for social networking, LinkedIn was set up in 2002. Mountain View, California has the headquarter of LinkedIn. The website was officially launched in the year 2003.
What is the purpose of LinkedIn?
Initially, the mission statement of LinkedIn stated to connect professionals all over the world to bring out more productivity and success.
LinkedIn, a professional website is a potential tool that can be used to boost up the professional career, networking, and activities regarding job hunt.
People all over the world use LinkedIn to maximize their influence and look for career opportunities. The section of jobs in LinkedIn is a potential tool to search and apply for various job opportunities. LinkedIn also consists of some professional settings that let the recruiters know that you are looking actively for jobs and there the recruiters can approach and appoint you for the job if you are the best fit.
You can also use LinkedIn to boost up your professional reputation by posting the latest updates in the section of news feed, and by posting comments on the posts other people have shared.
A subscription version, LinkedIn premium adds various other features including online classes on professional development, knowing who is viewing and looking for your profile, and the most important feature that premium LinkedIn adds is the option to send an instant message to anyone using LinkedIn, despite they are not in the range of your network.
HOW WAS LINKEDIN INVENTED?
The mystery behind LinkedIn:
The living room of Reid Hoffman, co-founder of LinkedIn, was the place where LinkedIn first started in the year 2002. However, the site was launched officially on 5th May 2003. Reid Hoffman was previously a board member of Ebay, PayPal, and Google. Therefore, he had a confirmed track record before he would take the first funding round and substantially floating on the stock exchange of New York.
This may be a great explanation for the integration of LinkedIn and Google.
A BRIEF TIMELINE OF LINKEDIN:
Since LinkedIn was invented in the living room of Reid Hoffman, the website went officially live on May 5th, 2003.
Just like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and several other platforms, LinkedIn is a social networking platform owned by a tech company of large scale, Microsoft.
However, unlike most platforms of social networking, it is a site specifically regarded to professionalism, designed to assist worldly people in making business connections, finding jobs, and sharing their resumes and experiences.
LinkedIn is among the oldest online social platforms in the world, even older than Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube.
When it was born i.e. in May; by the end of the month, the total number of members on the network was 4500.
In the year 2004, LinkedIn added a feature to upload the address book so that the members could invite their colleagues. Also, it added a feature of groups in which people could build communities. These features broadened out the appeal of LinkedIn and there were more than 1,217,647 memberships at the beginning of the year.
In the year 2005, LinkedIn launched a business mode with paid options for subscriptions and jobs. This led LinkedIn to an even bigger office. At the beginning of this year, the number of memberships exceeded 4,192,941.
By the beginning of the year 2006, the members of LinkedIn exceeded in number from 5 million. In the same year, it launched a feature of the public profile so that the past and current career if a member can be recorded. It was the first year of LinkedIn recording a profit. Also, a feature of recommendations was launched to connect with more people easily by the “people you may know” feature.
In the year 2007, Dan Nye was decided to lead the company, while Reid Hoffman decided to run the product. at the beginning of this year, the number of members exceeded 17,131,764.
In 2008, LinkedIn opened its first office outside the United States base. It opened up the Spanish as well as French versions of the website. The members exceeded 33 million at the beginning of this year.
In 2009, the memberships exceeded 50 million and Jeff Weiner stepped into LinkedIn to become the president followed by becoming CEO of the company.
In 2010, the memberships exceeded 85v million and the company opened more offices internationally to around 10 sites and more than 1000 employees.
In 2011, LinkedIn was listed on the stock exchange market of the New York at the share of $45. By the end of 2011, LinkedIn had more than 135 million members.
In 2012, Weiner attempted to make a simpler LinkedIn and released new functionalities and profile layouts. The memberships exceeded to 186 million.
By 2014, LinkedIn grew to more than 5400 full-time employees and 27 cities having LinkedIn offices to reflect the footprint in over 200 countries.
LinkedIn today:
Presently, LinkedIn has exceeded 315 million users from all over the world in which the majority are professionals. LinkedIn has shown a steady growth since its invention and as per record, the rate of new accounts creation is 2 new accounts per second. That makes more than a million accounts per week.
LinkedIn and digital marketing
Increasingly creative marketing professionals are finding they can identify and pitch to prospects using Linkedin, users profiles typically contain a lot of useful indicators of the interests and skill sets of each member, which then makes pitching successful.
Linkedin contains a large number of members who are the decision makers within an organisation meaning this form of pitching can work.
Members use Linkedin to find new roles meaning they are more likely to be kept up to date than many other social media profiles.
CONCLUSION:
LinkedIn continues its steady growth; however, the owners may add or remove certain features so grab the continuous interest of users. It keeps on delivering outstanding experience to all the users. LinkedIns has now been used as a default search for all business professionals.