✅ What is LinkedIn

LinkedIn is a social networking site designed specifically for the business community. The goal of the site is to allow registered members to establish and document networks of people they know and trust professionally.

A LinkedIn member’s profile page, which emphasizes skills, employment history and education, has professional network news feeds and a limited number of customizable modules. Basic membership for LinkedIn is free. Network members are called “connections.” Unlike other free social networking sites like Facebook or Twitter, LinkedIn requires connections to have a pre-existing relationship. 

With basic membership, a member can only establish connections with someone he has worked with, knows professionally (online or offline) or has gone to school with. Connections up to three degrees away (see six degrees of separation) are seen as part of the member's network, but the member is not allowed to contact them through LinkedIn without an introduction. Premium subscriptions can be purchased to provide members with better access to contacts in the LinkedIn database. 

LinkedIn was co-founded by Reid Hoffman, a former Executive Vice President in charge of business and corporate development for PayPal. The site, which was launched in May 2003, currently has over 300 million members from 200 countries, representing 170 industries. According to Reid Hoffman, 27 percent of LinkedIn subscribers are recruiters.

Microsoft acquired LinkedIn in June of 2016 for $26.2 billion. According to some experts, the rich troves of semi-structured data that LinkedIn's members freely give away -- job titles, geographies, industry information, skill sets -- made the deal a steal, even though the LinkedIn acquisition was Microsoft's more expensive purchase to date. LinkedIn has been gathering up data across the more than 225 million LinkedIn profiles in an Economic Graph to provide policymakers, employers, workers and educators with data-driven insight into patterns that will help align workforce supply with demand. Such patterns include when people generally look for the next step in their career, work migration trends in specific geographical locations, skill gaps in specific industries and what cities are "stickiest," i.e. areas that employees are less likely to move away from.