When someone talks about social media, they probably don’t immediately think of LinkedIn, but it’s undeniable that the corporate world’s social network has gone too far: its history begins 20 years ago, when it was founded in Silicon Valley.
The idea came from Reid Hoffman, an American entrepreneur who worked on one of the first social media platforms for Apple before launching his own platform in 1997.
Social network used to be a professional dating and hookup site, but it shut down two years later and failed to build up a decent user base in the early days of the web.
Hoffman became a senior executive at PayPal and earned a substantial sum when the service was acquired by eBay in 2002.
This helped him found LinkedIn with a team of former SocialNet colleagues on December 28, 2002, becoming its first CEO and then President.
This was a time when everyone recognized the importance of individual interconnectedness and peer-to-peer interactions.
LinkedIn was officially launched in May 2003, shortly after Myspace and Facebook. But they and other networks friend In pursuit of the consumer market, Hoffman’s venture has always focused on the corporate world.
LinkedIn internationalization started in 2008
LinkedIn was originally created as a space where users could share their resumes and build a network of people with the potential to recommend them.
The service took some time to gain ground with innovations such as allowing users to upload contact lists (2004), job lists (2005), and public profiles (2006).
LinkedIn went international in the late 2000s, first opening an office in the UK in 2008 and introducing Spanish and French versions that same year.
Jeff Weiner, formerly at Yahoo, took over as CEO the following year as the company became a full-fledged company.
he earned money exclusive features which allows users to do things like send messages, send promotional emails, and access analytics from outside their network. It also started selling ad space and packages to help recruiters attract talent.
LinkedIn went public in 2011. $9 billion valuation . This has helped fund a wave of acquisitions that are gradually adding new features to the platform, such as publishing articles (2015) and videos (2017).
The company was acquired by Microsoft in 2016 for $26 billion.
The following year, with Hoffman joining the Seattle giant’s board of directors and Weiner still serving as LinkedIn’s CEO today, Microsoft approach relatively independent owner.
benefits of the pandemic
Today, LinkedIn is the seventh largest social network after Facebook/Messenger, YouTube, WhatsApp, Instagram, Twitter and TikTok.
As of 2021, it has approximately 824 million users in 200 countries and regions, of which 6% (49 million) are premium subscribers paying a minimum of $29.99 per month.
LinkedIn’s focus on the corporate sector not only attracts a top user base, but also also young .
The majority (59%) are in the 25-34 age group, followed by the 18-24 (20%) and 35-54 (18%) age groups. The platform recorded revenue more than $10 billion in 2021.
The world’s largest social networks
a LinkedIn “good” epidemicconversations on the platform increased by 43% and content sharing increased by approximately 30%.
The network has benefited from a change in the way people connect. findings from several studies that the “weak links” in our professional networks are most important for gathering the critical information that gets us to the jobs we truly want.
At a time when the usual barriers of time and space are less relevant and Zoom searches are ubiquitous, this has become the perfect opportunity to revisit occasional contacts.
especially with For many people who questioned their job status, LinkedIn was the ideal place to view and reach out to their posts.
This means that the network played a key role in the “big layoff” because, like the platform, this movement was led by millennials.
Posts about job change or dismissal get lots of likes and comments, to inspire others do the same.
Having so many people connected on LinkedIn has multiplied its effects, making it the main catalyst and solution for employers.
LinkedIn user growth over time
Meet the “business influencer”
As a new category of social media influencers – “influencers” emerges, LinkedIn’s role as a lightning rod for business issues will likely determine how it evolves. ray ”.
Companies are increasingly discovering that employee profiles and posts on LinkedIn can better express the brand than corporate accounts, enabling them to develop their corporate business network much more quickly and naturally.
When this is done well, employee posts are often much more authentic than corporate PR.
Instead of editing articles about professional milestones and victories, people have become more open and honest about real business life.
More than 13 million LinkedIn members have set their profiles to “Creative Mode” to gain more visibility for their posts.
Most use hashtags #careertik tok He has garnered more than 1.5 billion views by posting things like daily vlogs about their salary and jobs.
This new “online downpour” represents a shift in the amount of information people disclose about their work online.
Users grapple with previously forbidden issues such as pay transparency, discrimination and professional undermining.
Some professionals, such as lawyers, entrepreneurs, and HR professionals, have shifted their posts to new content marketing jobs and other lucrative side jobs.
Twenty years after establishing LinkedIn, this allows the platform to enjoy the kind of trust and community growth that other social media networks would envy.
Of course there are difficulties – fake accounts For example, it is a problem. And LinkedIn inevitably attracts a lot of spam, which is probably one of the reasons it doesn’t get the same amount of daily engagement as other social media.
On the other hand, it benefits from the fact that the network does not have a single direct scale competitor. The closest majors might be Facebook groups or Reddit, but LinkedIn’s purely corporate focus will always be an advantage against these players.
At a time when traditional platforms like Facebook and Twitter are struggling, LinkedIn has a real opportunity to continue to be successful as the only platform of its size dedicated to the corporate world.
This article has been republished under a Creative Commons license from The Conversation. Read the original article.
Also read | Musk denies Twitter bankruptcy, NGO network seeks to be bought by ‘democracy club’
source: Noticias
Mark Jones is a world traveler and journalist for News Rebeat. With a curious mind and a love of adventure, Mark brings a unique perspective to the latest global events and provides in-depth and thought-provoking coverage of the world at large.