Happy 12th to LinkedIn May 5, 2015

World's most professional networking site, LinkedIn, turns 12 today.

Founded in December 2002, it launched May 5, 2003 for the sole purpose of a professional business network site and had an initial membership of 4,500.

LinkedIn was founded by Reid Hoffman with fellow founding team members from PayPal and Socialnet.com (Allen Blue, Eric Ly, Jean-Luc Vaillant, Lee Hower, Konstantin Guericke, Stephen Beitzel, David Eves, Ian McNish, Yan Pujante, and Chris Saccheri).

Founder Reid Hoffman, previously CEO of LinkedIn, is now Chairman of the Board. LinkedIn is headquartered in Mountain View, California, with additional U.S. offices in Chicago, Los Angeles, New York, Omaha, San Francisco, Sunnyvale and Washington D.C.

Linkedin also has International office locations in Amsterdam, Bangalore, Barcelona, Beijing, Dubai, Dublin, Hong Kong, London, Madrid, Melbourne, Milan, Mumbai, Munich, New Delhi, Paris, Perth, São Paulo, Singapore, Stockholm, Sydney, Tokyo and Toronto.

Within three years (by 2006) usage increased to 20 million members (an increase of 4,444% in 3 years).

LinkedIn is also available in 20 languages including Chinese, English, French, German, Italian,Portuguese, Spanish, Dutch, Swedish, Danish, Romanian, Russian, Turkish, Japanese, Czech, Polish, Korean, Indonesian, Malay, and Tagalog.

In March 2015, an article by About LinkedIn reported LinkedIn as having over 111 million unique U.S. members.

Not surprising that in the 4th Quarter of 2014 more than 75% of new members came to LinkedIn from outside the United States -- currently 347 million registrants globally from over 200 countries and territories. Additionally LinkedIn revenue reported total revenue for Q4 at $643 million (an average increase of 44% year-to-year).

LinkedIn Enhancements and Acquisitions Over the Years

April 2013, a new streamlined tool was featured to enable LinkedIn users to tag each other in posts and comments

In January 2011 LinkedIn traded its first shares on May 19, 2011 -- NYSE symbol "LNKD" with an IPO price of $45 per share. LinkedIN is currently valued at 261.52, nearly a 600% increase.

In 2010, LinkedIn began acquiring companies and to date has acquired 14 American companies (below is a chronological list).
• August 4, 2010, mspoke, an adaptive content personalization for $0.6 Million
• September 23, 2010, ChoiceVendor, Social B2B Reviews, $3.9 Million
• January 26, 2011, CardMunch, Social Contacts, $1.7 Million
• October 5, 2011, Connected Social CRM, price not available
• October 11, 2011, IndexTank Social search, price not available
• February 22, 2012, RapportiveSocial Contacts, $15 Million
• May 3, 2012 SlideShareSocial Content, $119 Million
• April 11, 2013, Pulse Web / Mobile newsreader, $90 Million
• February 6, 2014, Bright Job Matching, $120 Million
• July 14, 2014, Newsle Web applicat, $175 Million
• April 2, 2015, Refresh.io Web application, price not available-
• April 9, 2015, Lynda.com, eLearning, $1.5 Billion
• April 20, 2015, Hoaxbuster Club, Fact check and truth monitoring service, price not yet available

Latest resources:

• LinkedIn Joins the HoaxBuster Club, Buys Patent for Fact-Checking System, FACTUALLY, A Gizmodo Blog, http://www.techradar.com/us/news/internet/stop-lying-on-linkedin-because-soon-you-won-t-be-able-to-1291702
•http://www.forbes.com/sites/learnvest/2013/03/04/8-mistakes-you-should-never-make-on-linkedin/
•8 Mistakes You Should Never Make on LinkedIn, Forbes http://www.forbes.com/sites/learnvest/2013/03/04/8-mistakes-you-should-never-make-on-linkedin/2/