LinkedIn is most likely the biggest professional networking service around the globe at the time of writing. This article is an uninspiring overview of the background of the network anyone is able to read if interested. You can also read how to use LinkedIn for digital marketing.

The site was launched on the 5th of May 2003 in Mountain View, California in the United States. It was started on the initiative of Reid Hoffman and many individuals who assisted in establishing PayPal along with Socialnet.com. In August the year 2004, LinkedIn had a million members which was an incredible milestone and in March of 2006. LinkedIn was officially a profitable company. In the year 2007, LinkedIn has reached 10 million members. The following year it was announced that the social media website launched a mobile application that allowed users on mobile devices to access the platform right via their smartphones. As of the month of October the year 2010, LinkedIn received a ranking from Silicon Valley Insider as the 10th most valuable company in America and, by the end of the same calendar year LinkedIn had been valued by $1.575 billion US dollars. In 2016 Microsoft acquired LinkedIn and turned it into a subsidiary. To the present, Microsoft still owns LinkedIn however, it allows the company to predominantly operate as an separate company. Today, LinkedIn has over seven hundred forty million members who use the website.

LinkedIn is a great platform for business-to-business marketing. In 2017, 94 percent of marketers in B2B use LinkedIn to publish content. LinkedIn is also a good platform for users to search for job opportunities and establish professional relationships. It is also an ideal platform for creators who want to display what they've been up to professionally, or to discuss their matters of professional interest. In the year 2012, LinkedIn released a 'Creator Mode' that allows users to display their work and information on LinkedIn and select hashtags that relate to the topics people tend to post frequently about. The Creator Mode also lets users who use this Creator Mode to change their profiles to display broadcasts or live streams they participate in at any time in real-time.

LinkedIn is accessible in many countries around the world. It is accessible in more than 24 languages across the globe, which includes Arabic, Czech, Turkish, Swedish, and Romanian. But, LinkedIn has been made available to more than 200 countries, but there are many countries that have the service restricted or prohibited. LinkedIn's policy LinkedIn declares that "we don't allow members account access or accounts on our website for those from Cuba, Iran, North Korea, Sudan, or Syria" Therefore, anyone who lives within Syria or Iran who wants to utilize the platform to communicate with professionals may be in trouble until they find a way around. LinkedIn is also blocked by Russia, Kazakhstan, and is no longer available in China. However, the majority of countries in the world let you utilize LinkedIn without problem.

Another thing I like about LinkedIn is the way they have contributed to open source projects. This is something I personally appreciate as I view open software as the future of software and essential to advance in the area in information technology. Apache Kafka (a program for processing data stream and network-based messages) was developed and opened to the public at LinkedIn in the year 2011. LinkedIn also contributed to Apache DataFu, a Hadoop library that can process large quantities of data.

That's a quick background of LinkedIn and some of the fascinating things they've been up to. Are you finding this article interesting, boring, dull? Leave a comment or some feedback and tell me your thoughts!