LinkedIn started out in the living room of co-founder Reid Hoffman in 2002. The site officially launched on May 5, 2003. At the end of the first month in operation, LinkedIn had a total of 4,500 members in the network. It took 494 days to reach the first million members, and now, on average, a new member joins every second of every day, or approximately one million every 12 days. The company is privately held and has a diversified business model with revenues coming from user subscriptions, advertising sales and hiring solutions. LinkedIn Facts
LinkedIn operates the world’s largest professional network on the Internet with more than 90 million members in over 200 countries and territories. More than half of LinkedIn members are located outside of the United States. There were nearly two billion people searches on LinkedIn in 2010. Headquartered in Mountain View, California, LinkedIn also operates in Dublin, Ireland; London, England; Toronto, Canada; Mumbai, India; Amsterdam, The Netherlands; and Sydney, Australia. The company’s management team is comprised of seasoned executives from companies like Yahoo!, Google, Microsoft, TiVo, PayPal and Electronic Arts. The CEO of LinkedIn is Jeff Weiner. LinkedIn is currently available in six languages: English, French, German, Italian, Portuguese and Spanish. LinkedIn started off 2011 with about 1,000 full-time employees located all around the globe, up from around 500 at the beginning of 2010.
