LinkedIn is an American business and employment-oriented social networking service. The platform is primarily used for professional networking and career development, as it allows jobseekers to post their CVs and employers to post their job listings. As of 2024, LinkedIn has more than 1 billion registered members from over 200 countries and territories. It was launched on May 5, 2003, by Reid Hoffman and Eric Ly, receiving financing from numerous venture capital firms, including Sequoia Capital, in the years following its inception. Users can invite other people to become connections on the platform, regardless of whether the invitees are already members of LinkedIn. LinkedIn can also be used to organize offline events, create and join groups, write articles, and post photos and videos.
In 2007, there were 10 million users on the platform, which urged LinkedIn to open offices around the world, including India, Australia and Ireland. In October 2010 LinkedIn was ranked No. 10 on the Silicon Valley Insider's Top 100 List of most valuable startups. From 2015, most of the company's revenue came from selling access to information about its members to recruiters and sales professionals; LinkedIn also introduced their own ad portal named LinkedIn Ads to let companies advertise in their platform. In December 2016, Microsoft purchased LinkedIn for $26.2 billion, being their largest acquisition at the time. 94% of business-to-business marketers since 2017 use LinkedIn to distribute their content.
LinkedIn has been subject to criticism over its design choices, such as its endorsement feature and its use of members' e-mail accounts to send spam mail. Due to LinkedIn's poor security practices, several incidents have occurred with the website, including in 2012, when the cryptographic hashes of approximately 6.4 million users were stolen and published online; and in 2016, when 117 million LinkedIn usernames and passwords were offered for sale. The platform has also been criticised for its poor handling of misinformation and disinformation, particularly pertaining to the COVID-19 pandemic and to the 2020 US presidential election. Various countries have placed bans or restrictions on LinkedIn: it was banned in Russia in 2016, Kazakhstan in 2021, and China in 2023.
Company overview
Founded in Mountain View, California, LinkedIn is currently headquartered in Mountain View, with 36 global offices as of February 11, 2024. In February 2024, the company had around 18,500 employees.LinkedIn's current CEO is Ryan Roslansky. Jeff Weiner, previously CEO of LinkedIn, is now serving as the Executive Chairman. Reid Hoffman, founder of LinkedIn, is chairman of the board. It was funded by Sequoia Capital, Greylock, Bain Capital Ventures, Bessemer Venture Partners and the European Founders Fund. LinkedIn reached profitability in March 2006. Since January 2011, the company had received a total of $103 million of investment. LinkedIn filed for an initial public offering in January 2011 and traded its first shares in May, under the NYSE symbol "LNKD".
History
Founding from 2002 to 2011
The company was founded in December 2002 by Reid Hoffman and the founding team members from PayPal and Socialnet.com. In late 2003, Sequoia Capital led the Series A investment in the company. In August 2004, LinkedIn reached 1 million users. In March 2006, LinkedIn achieved its first month of profitability. In April 2007, LinkedIn reached 10 million users. In February 2008, LinkedIn launched a mobile version of the site.In June 2008, Sequoia Capital, Greylock Partners, and other venture capital firms purchased a 5% stake in the company for $53 million, giving the company a post-money valuation of approximately $1 billion. In November 2009, LinkedIn opened its office in Mumbai and soon thereafter in Sydney, as it started its Asia-Pacific team expansion. In 2010, LinkedIn opened an International Headquarters in Dublin, Ireland, received a $20 million investment from Tiger Global Management LLC at a valuation of approximately $2 billion, announced its first acquisition, Mspoke, and improved its 1% premium subscription ratio. In October of that year, Silicon Valley Insider ranked the company No. 10 on its Top 100 List of most valuable startups. By December, the company was valued at $1.575 billion in private markets. LinkedIn started its India operations in 2009 and a major part of the first year was dedicated to understanding professionals in India and educating members to leverage LinkedIn for career development.
2011 to present
LinkedIn filed for an initial public offering in January 2011. The company traded its first shares on May 19, 2011, under the NYSE symbol "LNKD", at $45 per share. Shares of LinkedIn rose as much as 171% on their first day of trade on the New York Stock Exchange and closed at $94.25, more than 109% above IPO price. Shortly after the IPO, the site's underlying infrastructure was revised to allow accelerated revision-release cycles. In 2011, LinkedIn earned $154.6 million in advertising revenue alone, surpassing Twitter, which earned $139.5 million. LinkedIn's fourth-quarter 2011, earnings soared because of the company's increase in success in the social media world. By this point, LinkedIn had about 2,100 full-time employees compared to the 500 that it had in 2010.In April 2014, LinkedIn announced that it had leased 222 Second Street, a 26-story building under construction in San Francisco's SoMa district, to accommodate up to 2,500 of its employees, with the lease covering 10 years. The goal was to join all San Francisco-based staff in one building, bringing sales and marketing employees together with the research and development team. In March 2016 they started to move in. In February 2016 following an earnings report, LinkedIn's shares dropped 43.6% within a single day, down to $108.38 per share. LinkedIn lost $10 billion of its market capitalization that day.
In 2016, access to LinkedIn was blocked by Russian authorities for non-compliance with the 2015 national legislation that requires social media networks to store citizens' personal data on servers located in Russia.
In June 2016, Microsoft announced that it would acquire LinkedIn for $196 a share, a total value of $26.2 billion. It was the largest acquisition made by Microsoft, until the acquisition of Activision Blizzard in 2022. The acquisition would be an all-cash, debt-financed transaction. Microsoft would allow LinkedIn to "retain its distinct brand, culture and independence", with Weiner to remain as CEO, who would then report to Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella. Analysts believed Microsoft saw the opportunity to integrate LinkedIn with its Office product suite to help better integrate the professional network system with its products. The deal was completed on December 8, 2016.
In late 2016, LinkedIn announced a planned increase of 200 new positions in its Dublin office, which would bring the total employee count to 1,200. Since 2017 94% of B2B marketers use LinkedIn to distribute content.
Soon after LinkedIn's acquisition by Microsoft, LinkedIn's new desktop version was introduced. The new version was meant to make the user experience similar across mobile and desktop. Some changes were made according to the feedback received from the previously launched mobile app. Features that were not heavily used were removed. For example, the contact tagging and filtering features are not supported anymore.
Following the launch of the new user interface, some users complained about the missing features which were there in the older version, slowness, and bugs in it. The issues were faced by free and premium users and with both the desktop and mobile versions of the site.
In 2019, LinkedIn launched globally the feature Open for Business that enables freelancers to be discovered on the platform. LinkedIn Events was launched in the same year.
In June 2020, Jeff Weiner stepped down as CEO and become executive chairman after 11 years in the role. Ryan Roslansky stepped up as CEO from his previous position as the senior vice president of product. In late July 2020, LinkedIn announced it laid off 960 employees, about 6 percent of the total workforce, from the talent acquisition and global sales teams. In an email to all employees, CEO Ryan Roslansky said the cuts were due to effects of the global COVID-19 pandemic.
In April 2021, CyberNews claimed that 500 million LinkedIn's accounts have leaked online. However, LinkedIn stated 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".
In June 2021, PrivacySharks claimed that more than 700 million LinkedIn records were on sale on a hacker forum. LinkedIn later stated that this is not a breach, but scraped data which is also a violation of their Terms of Service.
In Sep 2021, LinkedIn blocks U.S. journalists' profiles in China. Includes but is not limited to Bethany Allen-Ebrahimian, Melissa Chan, Greg Bruno, Jojje Olsson, J Michael Cole.
Microsoft ended LinkedIn operations in China in October 2021.
In 2022, LinkedIn earned $13.8 billion in revenue, compared to $10.3 billion in 2021.
In May 2023, LinkedIn cut 716 positions from its 20,000 workforce. The move, according to a letter from the company's CEO Ryan Roslansky, was made to streamline the business's operations. Roslansky further stated that this decision would result in the creation of 250 job opportunities. Additionally, LinkedIn also announced the discontinuance of its China local job apps.
In June 2024, Axios reported LinkedIn was testing a new AI assistant for its paid Premium users.
In September 2024, LinkedIn suspended its use of UK user data for AI model training after concerns were raised by the Information Commissioner's Office. The platform had quietly opted in users globally for data use in AI training. However, following ICO feedback, LinkedIn paused this practice for UK users. A company spokesperson stated that LinkedIn has always allowed users to control how their data is used and has now provided UK users with an opt-out option.
In November 2024, Linkedin challenged Australian legislation which sought to ban under-16's from social media platforms on the grounds that it does 'not have content interesting and appealing to minors.'
In October 2025, the LinkedIn Learning Career Hub was launched.