Christina Dest
BUAD477- Individual Paper
LinkedIn
April 27, 2013
Individual Project Paper: LinkedIn
LinkedIn Corporation is a social networking website used by people in professional
occupations to enhance business connections. The company was founded by Reid Hoffman
and founding team members from PayPal and Socialnet.com in December 2002, but was
officially launched on May 5, 2003. Founder Reid Hoffman is now Chairman of the Board
and LinkedIns current CEO is Jeff Weiner, previously a Yahoo! Inc. executive. As of
January 2013, LinkedIn has more than 200 million members in over 200 countries and
territories. About half of LinkedIn’s members are in the United States and 11 million are
from Europe. India has the fastest-growing network of users with 3 million users.
One major purpose of LinkedIn is to allow registered users to maintain what LinkedIn
calls “connections”, which is a contact list of people with whom they have a business
relationship with. Users can invite anyone to form a connection whether that person or
organization is a registered user of LinkedIn or not. This ability for users to invite nonusers
is beneficial to LinkedIn because encourages those unfamiliar with LinkedIn to check out
the webpage and to potentially register to become a user. Once a connection is established
between two users, a contact network is formed through direct connections, second-degree
connections and third-degree connections. The purpose of building up layers of indirect
connections through a direct connection is for a user to take advantage of a mutual contact
and to gain an introduction to someone he wishes to know. Another vital aspect of
LinkedIn is how it allows users to upload their professional resume and to design their own
business profile in order to showcase their work and community experiences. That profile
can then be used in the LinkedIn community to find jobs, people and business
opportunities recommended by someone in ones contact network. It also allows employers
to list job openings and to search for potential candidates.
Since its birth in 2003, LinkedIn has continued to grow by constantly updating its design
and features in order to please users and to also stay ahead of its competitors. For example,
in February of 2008, a mobile version of the site was launched, which permits users with a
smartphone to easily gain access of their LinkedIn accounts and connections. Since
LinkedIn’s target demographic is business professionals who most likely own a
smartphone, it was a strategic move to create the mobile application. This application is
