LinkedIn is an online social network for business professionals. It’s different than other social networking sites like Facebook because it’s designed specifically for professional networking — finding a job, discovering sales leads, connecting with potential business partners — rather than simply making friends or sharing media like photos, videos and music.

You can use LinkedIn on your computer or download the app for your smartphone. To see how LinkedIn works have a look at my profile. My Profile

As you can see it lists all my current and past jobs as well as recomendations from people I have done business with. It also show the connections I have. Connections are people I know or have done business with. This is a great way to find a lead in a business. If you search for a person or business it will check to see if any of your connections are connected to that person and you can then ask then for an introduction. It takes business networks to a whole new level.

Here are some facts and figures provided by LinkedIn

Company Background

  • 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.
  • 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.
  • The company is publicly 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 100 million members in over 200 countries and territories.
  • More than half of LinkedIn members are currently located outside of the United States.
  • There were nearly two billion people searches on LinkedIn in 2010.
  • Headquartered in Mountain View, Calif., LinkedIn also has U.S. offices in San Francisco, Chicago, New York and Omaha, Neb. International LinkedIn offices are located in Amsterdam, Dublin, London, Paris, Sydney, Toronto and Mumbai, India.
  • 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.

 

Worldwide Membership

  • 100m+ professionals around the world as of March 2011
  • 20m+ members in Europe as of December 2010
  • 5m+ members in the UK as of December 2010
  • 1m+ members in France
  • 2m+ members in the Netherlands
  • 1m+ members in Italy
  • 1m+ members in the DACH region (Germany, Austria and Switzerland)
  • 1m+ members in Spain
  • 9m+ members in India
  • 3m+ members in Canada
  • 3m+ members in Brazil
  • 2m+ members in Australia
  • 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.).

LinkedIn and Business

  • As of January 2011, LinkedIn counts executives from all 2010 Fortune 500 companies as members; its hiring solutions were used by 73 of the Fortune 100 companies as of March 22, 2011.
  • More than 2 million companies have LinkedIn Company Pages.
  • LinkedIn represents a valuable demographic for marketers with an affluent & influential membership.
  • Thousands of developers are using LinkedIn APIs to create innovative tools and services for professionals.

I will post more information over the coming weeks.