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LinkedIn Corporation

Better Essays

For the exclusive use of W. Zhou, 2015.

9-713-420
REV: MARCH 19, 2013

DAVID YOFFIE
LIZ KIND

LinkedIn Corporation, 2012
Jeff Weiner, chief executive officer of Mountain View, CA based LinkedIn Corporation (LinkedIn), reflected on how much LinkedIn had grown since its founding in 2003. Since its inception, LinkedIn had become a leading Silicon Valley institution with a brand name that was recognizable throughout the U.S. and in many countries overseas. As of March 2012, LinkedIn was the world’s largest professional network on the Internet with $522.2 million in revenue in 2011 and more than 150 million members in over 200 countries and territories.
Unlike other major social networking sites such as Facebook and Google+, LinkedIn focused …show more content…

It helps on two vectors. You raise money much more easily with that capability. If you can’t raise money, you still have a valuable thing.”3
One early LinkedIn executive described another turning point for the company:
In late 2005 or early 2006, we started to create these public profiles—versions of your profile that were indexed into Google. It made it easier to explain why LinkedIn was valuable. Is someone going to Google you? Of course. Don’t you care about what they find? All the Sex and the City references about Googling people led to being able to explain to mainstream
America why it was so important.4
Dan Nye, formerly from Advent Software, replaced Hoffman as CEO in February 2007. Hoffman remained as the company’s chairman and president of products. He explained, “I knew I needed to hire a CEO. I know I’m strong and good at product vision, business strategy, [and] trends in the
Internet industry. I like to spend my time on business and product questions, rather than organizational things.”5 The company continued to add premium subscription products and corporate services, and in late 2007, introduced its Intelligent Applications platform, which enabled partners to build LinkedIn features on their Web sites or deploy applications on LinkedIn’s. In early
2008, the company announced that over 5 million of its 18 million members were based in Europe, and opened its first overseas office in London. Early that year, LinkedIn also launched company profiles (in

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