What is LinkedIn?
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. Today it counts more than 100 million professionals!
Roughly one million new members join LinkedIn every week, at a rate equivalent to a professional joining the site faster than one member per second.
One purpose of the site is to allow registered users to maintain a list of contact details of people with whom they have some level of relationship, called “Connections”. Users can invite anyone (whether a site user or not) to become a connection.
This list of connections can then be used in a number of ways:
- A contact network is built up consisting of their direct connections, the connections of each of their connections (termed second-degree connections) and also the connections of second-degree connections (termed third-degree connections). This can be used to gain an introduction to someone a person wishes to know through a mutual contact.
- It can then be used to find jobs, people and business opportunities recommended by someone in one's contact network.
- Employers can list jobs and search for potential candidates.
- Job seekers can review the profile of hiring managers and discover which of their existing contacts can introduce them.
- Users can post their own photos and view photos of others to aid in identification.
- Users can now follow different companies and can get notification about the new joining and offers available.
- Users can save (i.e. bookmark) jobs which they would like to apply for.
LinkedIn worldwide
- 100m+ professionals around the world as of March 2011
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- 1m+ members in the DACH region (
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- As of April 2011, LinkedIn counts more than 11 million recent college graduates* around the world as members (*LinkedIn defines recent graduates as members who have graduated within the last five years--between 2005 and 2010.).
