LinkedIn’s Journey – The First 20 Years Of The Professional Network [Timeline]

The professional network was officially launched on 5 May, 2003 with a mission to connect the world’s professionals to make them more productive and successful. LinkedIn’s vision is aimed at creating economic opportunity for every member of the global workforce.

LinkedIn Business Accounts provide more powerful search tools to recruiters, investment professionals, management consultants, analysts, and market researchers, addressing their need to find the right job candidates and experts quickly and efficiently.

Less than 4 years after its official launch, LinkedIn reached the staggering number of users of 10 million! The news was introduced together with the change in the management team – Reid Hoffman stepped off as a CEO and Dan Nye took his position. By the way, 4 more years later – in June 2011, LinkedIn reached 10 million members only in India.

Companies finally found a place in the professional network. What now is known as LinkedIn Page. Back then there were 20 million professional profiles on LinkedIn and it was high time companies had their pages. The Company Profiles combined LinkedIn network information with a company’s description, key industry statistics, and targeted job listings.

A new era has begun – LinkedIn Events were made available and anybody who was excited to search for a suitable event, could do it through their Events browse page. There one could find info about events based on speakers, topics, conference organizer, etc. This was a partnership with Eventbrite – a leading provider of online event management and ticketing services.

Jeff Weiner was named as the new CEO of LinkedIn, while founder Reid Hoffman remained as executive chairman. Weiner had played a vital role in the company’s growth, with LinkedIn exceeding 42 million global members at the time and becoming profitable.

This major milestone in LinkedIn’s development was announced by the professional network’s CEO Jeff Weiner.

LinkedIn acquired the presentation sharing startup SlideShare for $118.75 million in cash and stock. The core idea was to help professionals share presentations and connect people through content.

The professional network reaffirmed its intention to put a focus on the learning process as a prerequisite for success in any sphere. Its acquirement of lynda.com, a leading online learning company teaching business, technology and creative skills, was an important step towards offering a massive library of high-quality courses.

Microsoft’s $26.2-billion acquisition of LinkedIn was one of the most famous win-win tech deal of the century. LinkedIn got the opportunity to integrate with Microsoft’s enterprise software and Microsoft could now reach LinkedIn’s massive user base.

The previous vice president of product development, Ryan Roslansky, became LinkedIn’s CEO. On his first day of work in the new position, Roslansky released a letter to the company’s employees with several key messages. These included the importance of LinkedIn remaining a leader in innovation in the labor market, working as one big body to address pandemic threats and growing racism in the US, and pushing for a faster pace of innovation within the company.

LinkedIn gave its members the chance to provide regular news about their expertise to their followers with Newsletters. The feature was available only for individuals then. 

So close to a 4-digit number of followers… The professional network announced that its 900 mln members span across 200 countries and regions worldwide.