Today, LinkedIn has become a significant platform for all business professionals among all the social platforms but very few people are aware of its roots, when it was started and its journey- so here is an article to explain the basics of LinkedIn.
Unlike Facebook or other social networks, which are often purely recreation, LinkedIn focuses on a user's professional connections. Here, users have to create a profile page that looks like a resume, in which they can summarize their career, showcase their special skills and knowledge as well as listed their educational qualifications and professional journey.
Connections are built between users when one accepts an invitation from another to join his or network. With LinkedIn, you can grow your career, it allows you to search for jobs, find connections at a particular organization and get a recommendation from other users as well. The best part about LinkedIn is that here the member is free. However, for premium service, you have to pay and you get more profiles in their search results and see profiles of any LinkedIn users.
The business-oriented social networking site was founded in the year 2002 and headquartered in Mountain View, California. LinkedIn was created in the living room of Reid Hoffman, co-founder of the site. Next year, it was launched to the public. Reid has various startup experiences before being part of LinkedIn. He had worked as a board member of Google, PayPal, and eBay. The main objective of starting is to create connections in the professional world. After the first month of their operation, they gained over 4,500 members.
In the year 2005, LinkedIn started to enhance their services. They launched jobs and subscription fee options, by then the number of users had risen by over 3.3 million users in the first quarter of the month. In 2006, the social platform released the people you may know feature to open for new connections that we are still using present-day. The social company also recorded the first profit since being founded, an impressive result after only four years of operating.
After a long journey, in 2007, LinkedIn became profitable. It continued its growth and expanded its headquarters to the UK, France, and Spain in 2008. That year, the platform has over 15 million members and by 2011 it had more than 100 million members globally. The initial public offering of LinkedIn raised $353 million in the same year.
In 2013, LinkedIn celebrated its 10th year anniversary and it has over 225 million users. That time, LinkedIn started focusing on targeting recent graduates and young professionals as new members.
After five years in 2016, LinkedIn was acquired by Microsoft for approximately $26 billion. The following had over 500 million members in more than 200 countries. By 2017, the new desktop version was created. The latest version provides the user with a seamless experience to mobile as well as desktop applications.
Recently, more specifically in 2019, LinkedIn produced worldwide a new feature open for business that allows freelancers to be discovered on the platform.
According to the LinkedIn statistics, in the last few years the platform has grown a lot. It has topped 315 million users globally that statically is the majority of professionals. The social network has grown steadily since day one with the current rate at two new users accounts being created per second and it is over one million new users each week joining.
LinkedIn has been flourishing constantly; it keeps adding new features to keep the experience delivering for the users. And, LinkedIn has become the default lookup for all serious business professionals. They continue to be acquisitively buying CardMuch, Rapportive, Pulse, SlideShare, Connected and more.
Over 70% of users are from outside the US.
Present-day, there are over 364 million male users and 360 million female users.
More than 90 million users are senior-level influencers and 63 million are in decision-making positions.
More than 50% of internet users with a college degree or higher use of LinkedIn.
24% of Millennial (18-24 years old) use LinkedIn.
This epic history of LinkedIn started as most companies do and it is progressing at a rapid pace. Hopefully, you found this post helpful and make your business successful with this guide.
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