LinkedIn

LinkedIn Corporation

Logo used since September 2021
Headquarters in Sunnyvale, California
Type of business	Subsidiary
Type of site	Professional network service Social media
Available in	36 languages[1]
List of languages Arabic, Bengali, Chinese (simplified), Chinese (traditional), Czech, Danish, Dutch, English (UK), English (US), Farsi, French, Finnish, German, Greek, Hebrew, Hindi, Hungarian, Indonesian, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Marathi, Malay, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Russian, Spanish, Swedish, Tagalog, Telugu, Thai, Turkish, Ukrainian, Vietnamese
Founded	May 5, 2003; 22 years ago (2003-05-05) Mountain View, California, U.S.
Headquarters	Sunnyvale, California , U.S.
Area served	Worldwide
Founder(s)	Reid Hoffman Eric Ly
Key people	Jeff Weiner (Executive Chairman) Ryan Roslansky (CEO)
Industry	Internet
Revenue	US$15.15 billion (2023)[2]
Employees	18,500 (2024)[1]
Parent	Microsoft (2016–present)
Subsidiaries	LinkedIn Learning Connectifier Drawbridge Glint
URL	linkedin.com
IPv6 support	Yes
Advertising	AdSense
Registration	Required
Users	310 million MAU (February 2023)[3][unreliable source?]
Launched	May 5, 2003; 22 years ago (2003-05-05)
Current status	Active

LinkedIn (/lɪŋktˈɪn/) is an American business and employment-oriented social networking service. The platform is primarily used for professional networking and career development, and 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.^[4] It was launched on May 5, 2003 by Reid Hoffman and Eric Ly^[5], 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.^[6]

In 2007, there were 10 million users on the platform, and permitted LinkedIn to open offices around the world, including India, Australia and Ireland. In October of 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 and has also introduced their own ad portal named LinkedIn Ads to let companies advertise in their platform.^[7] In December of 2016, Microsoft purchased LinkedIn for $26.2 billion, being their largest acquisition at the time.^[8] 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 (likely sourced from the 2012 hack) 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.