This is a timeline of online work-focused networking service LinkedIn.
| Time period | Key developments at LinkedIn | |
|---|---|---|
| 2002–2010 | LinkedIn is founded, introduces premium services for generating revenues, achieves profitability in 2006 (being the first major social network/Web 2.0 enterprise to do so), becomes the most popular site for work-based networking, and acquires its first startups. It reaches 70 million users by June 2010. | |
| 2011–2016 | LinkedIn goes IPO, reaches beyond 100 million users, and expands more aggressively internationally. It reaches 300 million members in 2013, and 400 million in 2016. LinkedIn gets acquired by Microsoft in June 2016.[1] |
| Year | Month and date | Event type | Details | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2002 | December 14 | Company | LinkedIn is founded by Reid Hoffman and 4 other friends. | |
| 2003 | May 5 | Company | LinkedIn cofounders send invitations, launching LinkedIn. | |
| 2004 | May | Competition | Viadeo – a social networking site for business owners, entrepreneurs and managers – is launched in France.[2] | |
| 2004 | August | Growth | LinkedIn reaches 1 million users.[3] | |
| 2005 | July | Product | LinkedIn launches LinkedIn for Groups, a premium service aimed at power users like recruiters, analysts and researchers.[4] | |
| 2005 | August | Product | LinkedIn launches a premium service, LinkedIn Business Accounts, which gives businesses access to more powerful search tools.[5] | |
| 2006 | March | Company | LinkedIn achieves its first month of profitability. | |
| 2007 | February | Team | Dan Nye becomes CEO of LinkedIn, and Reid Hoffman moves from CEO to chairman and president. | |
| 2007 | April | Growth | LinkedIn reaches 10 million users. | |
| 2007 | May | Product | LinkedIn launches "who's been viewing your profile" feature.[6] | |
| 2008 | February | Product | LinkedIn launches a mobile version of the site.[7] | |
| 2008 | April | Product | LinkedIn launches the "People You May Know" feature.[8] | |
| 2008 | June | Funding | Sequoia Capital, Greylock Partners, and other venture capital firms purchase a 5% stake in the company for $53 million, giving the company a post-money valuation of approximately $1 billion.[9] | |
| 2008 | September | Product | LinkedIn launches targeted advertising - allowing advertisers to target specific sections of LinkedIn users (InCrowds) based on the information in their profiles.[10] | |
| 2008 | October | Product | LinkedIn enables an "applications platform" that allows other online services to be embedded within a member's profile page. Among the initial applications are an Amazon Reading List that allows LinkedIn members to display books they are reading, a connection to Tripit, and a Six Apart, WordPress and TypePad application that allows members to display their latest blog postings within their LinkedIn profile.[11] | |
| 2009 | December | Internationalization | LinkedIn opens office in India, and says that 50% of its userbase is now international.[12] | |
| 2010 | March | Internationalization | LinkedIn opens an International Headquarters in Dublin, Ireland.[13] | |
| 2010 | July | Funding | LinkedIn receives a $20 million investment from Tiger Global Management LLC at a valuation of approximately $2 billion.[14] | |
| 2010 | August 4 | Acquisitions | LinkedIn announces its first acquisition, mSpoke, for its "adaptive personalization engine".[15] The acquisition was for $0.6 million.[16] | |
| 2010 | September 23 | Acquisitions | LinkedIn acquires ChoiceVendor, a business-to-business review service, for $3.9 million.[17] | |
| 2011 | January 26 | Acquisitions | LinkedIn acquires CardMunch, a business card scanning application, for $1.7 million.[18] [19] The service would shut down in 2014 and users would be forced to migrate to Evernote.[20] | |
| 2011 | May 19 | Company | LinkedIn IPOs and trades its first shares under the NYSE symbol "LNKD", at $45 per share. | |
| 2011 | July | Product | LinkedIn launches a new feature allowing companies to include an "Apply with LinkedIn" button on job listing pages.[21] The new plugin will allow potential employees to apply for positions using their LinkedIn profiles as resumes. All applications will also be saved under a "Saved Jobs" tab. | |
| 2011 | October 5 | Acquisitions | LinkedIn acquires Connected, a social customer relationship management service.[22] | |
| 2011 | October 11 | Acquisitions | LinkedIn acquires IndexTank, a social search service.[23] | |
| 2012 | February 22 | Acquisitions | LinkedIn announces that it will acquire Rapportive, a Gmail plugin that shows people the social media profiles from whoever they're corresponding with on Gmail.[24] | |
| 2012 | May 3 | Acquisitions | LinkedIn acquires SlideShare for $119 million. SlideShare is a web service that allows people to upload presentations and share them with everyone.[25] [26] | |
| 2012 | June | Company | LinkedIn falls victim to a hacking attempt that resulted in 6.5 million hashed passwords reportedly leaked - revealing that LinkedIn does not use password salting.[27] [28] In 2016, the company reveals that the breach was far greater than originally thought.[29] | |
| 2012 | September | Product | LinkedIn starts allowing users to endorse each other's skills.[30] | |
| 2012 | October | Product | LinkedIn launches the "Influencer" program, allowing selected "thought leaders" (their term) to share original content directly with LinkedIn users.[31] | |
| 2013 | January | Competition | TalentBin launches. It is a "search engine" for talented people that picks up their digital tracks (on sites like Stack Exchange) to sell to recruiters.[32] | |
| 2013 | July 23 | Product | LinkedIn announces their Sponsored Updates ad service. Individuals and companies can now pay a fee to have LinkedIn sponsor their content and spread it to their user base. This is a common way for social media sites such as LinkedIn to generate revenue.[33] | |
| 2013 | April 11 | Acquisitions | LinkedIn acquires Pulse, a popular newsreader for the web and mobile, for $90 million.[34] | |
| 2013 | September | Legal | A class action lawsuit is filed against LinkedIn, accusing it of automatically sending invitations to contacts in a user's email address book without permission. The court agreed with LinkedIn that permission had in fact been given for invitations to be sent, but not for the two further reminder emails.[35] | |
| 2014 | February 6 | Acquisitions | LinkedIn acquires Bright.com, a job matching website, for $120 million.[36] | |
| 2014 | April | Internationalization | LinkedIn launches a new Chinese website in the Chinese language.[37] | |
| 2014 | April | Company | LinkedIn leases 222 Second Street, a 26-story building under construction in San Francisco's SoMa district, to accommodate up to 2,500 of its employees | |
| 2014 | July 14 | Acquisitions | LinkedIn acquires Newsle, a service that allows users to follow real news about their Facebook friends, LinkedIn contacts, and public figures.[38] | |
| 2014 | July 22 | Acquisitions | LinkedIn acquires Bizo, a web application that helps advertisers reach businesses and professionals, for $175 million.[39] | |
| 2015 | January 14 | Competition | Facebook announces launch of Facebook at Work, which allows businesses to create their own social networks amongst their employees that are built to look and act like Facebook itself.[40] | |
| 2015 | February | Legal | LinkedIn settles a class action lawsuit, compensating up to 800,000 people who paid for its premium services who alleged that it falsely assured them it was using strong security measures to protect their personal information.[41] | |
| 2015 | March 16 | Acquisitions | LinkedIn acquires Careerify, a web application that helps businesses hire people using social media.[42] | |
| 2015 | April 2 | Acquisitions | LinkedIn acquires Refresh.io, a web application that provides insights about people in one's networks right before one meets them.[43] | |
| 2015 | April 9 | Acquisitions | In its largest acquisition to date ($1.5 billion), LinkedIn announces its acquisition of Lynda.com, an eLearning platform allowing users to learn business, technology, software, and creative skills through videos.[44] | |
| 2015 | May 7 | Product | LinkedIn adds an analytics tool to its publishing platform. The tool allows authors to better track traffic that their posts receive.[45] | |
| 2015 | August 28 | Acquisitions | LinkedIn acquires Fliptop, a predictive sales and marketing firm that uses data science to help companies close more sales.[46] | |
| 2015 | October | Product | LinkedIn introduces new mobile app, codenamed "Project Voyager", making the design more intuitive.[47] | |
| 2016 | February 4 | Acquisitions | LinkedIn acquires Connectifier, a web application that helps companies with their recruiting.[48] | |
| 2016 | February | Company | LinkedIn's shares drop 43.6% within a single day following an earnings report, down to $108.38 per share. LinkedIn loses $10 billion of its market capitalization that day.[49] [50] | |
| 2016 | June 13 | Acquisitions | Microsoft announces the acquisition of LinkedIn at $26.2 billion ($60 per user).[51] [52] [53] The acquisition would be completed on December 8, 2016.[54] The transaction would result in the payment of approximately $26.4 billion in cash merger consideration.[55] | |
| 2016 | July 26 | Acquisitions | LinkedIn acquires PointDrive, a web application that lets salespeople share visual content with prospective clients to help seal the deal.[56] | |
| 2016 | September 12 | Product | LinkedIn unveils three new products that it will roll out in India: (1) LinkedIn Lite, a smaller version of the mobile website for people with slower internet connections; (2) LinkedIn Placements, an online screening test intended for students to take; and (3) Starter Pack, a marketing package for small and mid-sized businesses.[57] [58] [59] | |
| 2016 | September 22 | Product | LinkedIn launches LinkedIn Learning. The new website caters both to employees seeking career advancement as well as employers wishing to train their employees. A large part of the content is from Lynda, which LinkedIn had acquired in April 2015.[60] [61] [62] [63] | |
| 2016 | October 6 | Product | LinkedIn launches Open Candidates, a feature that allows users to signal to recruiters that they are looking for a job. The feature allows only those recruiters using LinkedIn's premium-tier service to see whether a user is using Open Candidates.[64] | |
| 2016 | November 17 | Internationalization | LinkedIn begins to be blocked in Russia due to a law in Russia that requires online services to store personal data of Russian citizens on Russian servers. LinkedIn remains accessible in Russia via virtual private networks.[65] [66] [67] At the time of the block, LinkedIn has 6 million registered users in Russia.[68] | |
| 2017 | January 6 | Internationalization | The Russian government requires Google and Apple to remove the LinkedIn app from their Russian app stores.[69] | |
| 2017 | January 19 | Product | LinkedIn unveils its new desktop website redesign, which will roll out over several weeks. The new design is said to have "a simpler, app-like look" and be similar to the design of Facebook's desktop website.[70] [71] [72] [73] | |
| 2017 | February 15 | Competition | In the United States and Canada, Facebook launches a feature to search for jobs. The feature allows businesses to post job openings through the status update composer, and allows users to apply to those job postings.[74] [75] [76] [77] |