LinkedIn

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LinkedIn Corporation

logo
legal form Incorporated
ISIN US53578A1088
founding 2002
Seat Sunnyvale, California United States
United StatesUnited States 
management Jeff Weiner
Number of employees 15,000
sales 2.99 billion US dollars
Branch Career network (internet)
Website www.linkedin.com
As of December 31, 2015

LinkedIn [ ˌliŋkt.ˈɪn ], based in Sunnyvale , California , USA is a web-based social network for maintaining existing business contacts and for establishing new business connections. LinkedIn is available in 24 languages ​​and has over 660 million users in 193 different countries and regions. Europe has the largest user base with 206 million users. It is followed by the USA with 165 million users, India with 62 million, and mainland China with 48 million. The company has been part of Microsoft since December 8, 2016 .

history

LinkedIn headquarters in Mountain View, California

LinkedIn was founded on December 28, 2002, in Mountain View, California by Reid Hoffman, Allen Blue, Konstantin Guericke, Eric Ly and Jean-Luc Vaillant. This was published on May 5, 2003. In January 2014, LinkedIn was the 8th most visited website in the US and 12th worldwide. Since February 4, 2009, the network has also been available in German.

In January 2011, the US company announced that it would go public. On May 19, 2011, the share was traded on the stock exchange for the first time. The capitalization at issue price was $ 4.3 billion; the market capitalization then rose in a few minutes to 8.5 billion dollars.

Microsoft made an offer on June 13, 2016 to acquire LinkedIn for a purchase price of $ 26.2 billion. This was approved by the EU competition authority at the beginning of December 2016 on the condition that competing networks, especially XING , have equal access to Microsoft's operating systems for 5 years. The acquisition was completed on December 8, 2016.

At the end of July 2020, LinkedIn announced the layoff of around 1,000 employees. The trigger for the layoffs was the corona pandemic and the associated economic downturn.

Acquisitions

LinkedIn has made several company acquisitions and, in one case, an application.

Companies country Adopted for Accepted source
mspoke United States 0.6 million 2010
ChoiceVendor United States 3.9 million 2010
CardMunch United States 1.7 million 2011
Connected United States - 2011
IndexTank United States - 2011
Rapportive United States 15 million 2012
SlideShare United States 119 million 2012
Pulse (from Alphonso Labs) United States 90 million 2013
Bright.com United States 120 million 2014
Newsle United States - 2014
Bizo United States 175 million 2014
Careerify Canada - 2015
Refresh.io United States - 2015
Lynda.com United States 1.5 billion 2015
Flip top United States - 2015
Connectifier United States - 2016
PointDrive United States - 2016
Glint United States - 2018
Drawbridge United States - 2019

Usage and functions

According to its own information, LinkedIn has over half a billion users in 2018.

Similar to other social networks on the Internet, LinkedIn offers the following functions:

  • A profile with a résumé can be created in several languages
  • Link to your own website
  • New contacts can be made
  • Ability to recommend other members
  • Create company profiles
  • Membership and establishment of thematic groups

Account types

There are different account models at LinkedIn. The freemium variant is the "basic account". This is free of charge and contains:

  • Create profile
  • Multilingual profiles
  • Search (by name, first name, company, city, geotargeting, position)
  • Create company profile
  • Join or create groups
  • Network statistics
  • Messages (limited to contacts, group members, moderators)

The paid premium account offers extended functions:

  • Search for job level, function in the company, company size
  • Profile organizer = possibility to save non-contacts in folders and categorize them
  • Advanced network statistics

A recruiter account also offers solutions for collaboration within the network, for example for projects. A complete CRM approach is pursued here.

criticism

Using members' email accounts to send spam

LinkedIn sends “invitation e-mails” to Outlook contacts from the e-mail accounts of its members. The consent of the user is not obtained at all or is sometimes difficult to understand. The “invitations” give the impression that the email owner sent the invitation himself. If there is no answer, the answer will be reminded several times ("You have not yet answered the invitation from XY.")

LinkedIn has been sued in the US on charges of hacking email accounts and spamming . The company argued with the right to freedom of expression. In addition, the users concerned would be supported in setting up a network.

Moving Outlook mails to LinkedIn servers

At the end of 2013 it became known that the LinkedIn app intercepted users' e-mails and moved them unnoticed to the LinkedIn server, thereby gaining full access. LinkedIn used man-in-the-middle attacks for this .

privacy

The Stiftung Warentest criticizes that on the one hand the rights of the users are restricted and on the other hand the network is granted extensive rights. This is an unjustified imbalance. LinkedIn does not respond to requests from the consumer protection center.

In November 2016, Russia announced that it would block the network in its own country because it "illegally stores data from Russian users on servers abroad". The cited law has been in force there since 2014.

Platform security

In June 2012, it became known that a Russian hacker had published the passwords of 6.5 million LinkedIn members on the Internet after attacking LinkedIn's servers. The data theft was confirmed by LinkedIn the following day. According to Sophos , the passwords are only simply encrypted so that decryption is easy. Since LinkedIn transmits the authentication tokens unencrypted, accounts are vulnerable and easy to take over.

In May 2016, it was also announced that more than 100 million passwords and email addresses were stolen in the 2012 attack. A prime suspect was arrested in the Czech Republic on October 5, 2016.

Censorship and blockades

China

In order to comply with Chinese laws, LinkedIn is censoring its presence worldwide. In 2014, for example, the company admitted to suppressing all discussions about the massacre at the Gate of Heavenly Peace . After LinkedIn initially stated that the censorship was inadvertent outside of China, the company later stated that global censorship was being enforced "to protect Chinese citizens."

Russia

LinkedIn has been blocked in Russia since November 2016 because, contrary to Russian law, the website stores data from Russian users on foreign servers. However, Novaya Gazeta described in April 2018 that the blockade was being bypassed by many users.

Fake profiles for recruiting informers

In December 2017, it became known that the Chinese secret service was feeding LinkedIn with fake profiles in order to recruit spies .

Web links

Commons : LinkedIn  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Statistics. LinkedIn Newsroom, accessed November 27, 2019 .
  2. ↑ Form 10-K 2015 (PDF)
  3. ↑ 660 million members in 200 countries and regions worldwide. In: LinkedIn Newsroom. LinkedIn, accessed November 27, 2019 .
  4. ↑ Alexa Site Info - LinkedIn .
  5. ↑ LinkedIn starts offering in German , Heise online , February 4, 2009.
  6. ↑ Career network LinkedIn goes public ( Memento from January 24, 2013 in the web archive archive.today ), Agence France-Presse (AFP), January 28, 2011, accessed on January 28, 2011.
  7. ↑ LinkedIn charges maximum price when going public. Hrsg = Handelszeitung. In: Handelszeitung.ch. May 19, 2011, accessed November 23, 2016 .
  8. ↑ The madness is back - LinkedIn explodes when it goes public , Handelsblatt , accessed on May 19, 2011.
  9. ↑ Microsoft buys business network LinkedIn. Tagesschau.de, June 13, 2016.
  10. ↑ Bloomberg: Microsoft Said to Use German Site to Appease EU Over LinkedIn , accessed December 9, 2016 (English)
  11. ^ Ingrid Lunden: Microsoft officially closes its $ 26.2B acquisition of LinkedIn. In: TechCrunch. December 8, 2016, accessed November 27, 2019 .
  12. ↑ Career network: LinkedIn is shedding almost 1,000 jobs worldwide. Retrieved July 22, 2020 .
  13. ↑ Erich Schwartzel: CMU startup mSpoke acquired by LinkedIn. In: post-gazette.com. Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, August 4, 2010, accessed November 23, 2016 .
  14. ↑ LinkedIn Acquires Choice vendor. In: businesswire.com. BusinessWire, September 23, 2010, accessed November 23, 2016 .
  15. ↑ LinkedIn buys CardMunch. In: IT Times. January 27, 2011, accessed November 23, 2016 .
  16. ^ Tomio Geron: LinkedIn Acquires Social CRM Company Connected. In: forbes.com. Forbes, October 5, 2011, accessed November 23, 2016 .
  17. ↑ Leena Rao: LinkedIn Buys Real-Time, Hosted Search Startup IndexTank. In: techcrunch.com. TechCrunch, October 11, 2011, accessed November 23, 2016 .
  18. ^ Anthony Ha: Rapportive Announces Acquisition By LinkedIn. In: techcrunch.com. TechCrunch, February 22, 2012, accessed November 23, 2016 .
  19. ↑ Jay Yarow: LinkedIn Is Buying SlideShare For $ 119 Million. In: businessinsider.com. Business Insider, May 3, 2012, accessed November 23, 2016 .
  20. ↑ Thomas Cloer: LinkedIn buys Newsreader Pulse. In: computerwoche.de. Computerwoche, March 12, 2013, accessed November 23, 2016 .
  21. ^ Jeremias Radke: LinkedIn buys Bright job exchange. In: heise.de. Heise Online, February 8, 2014, accessed November 23, 2016 .
  22. ↑ Darrell Etherington: LinkedIn Acquires Newsle To Deliver More Relevant News About Your Connections. In: techcrunch.com. TechCrunch, July 14, 2014, accessed November 23, 2016 .
  23. ↑ David Gelles: LinkedIn Makes Another Deal, Buying Bizo. In: New York Times . July 22, 2014, accessed November 23, 2016 .
  24. ↑ Florian Kalenda: LinkedIn takes over the employee search platform Careerify. ZDNet, March 17, 2015, accessed on November 23, 2016 .
  25. ↑ Ingrid Lunden: LinkedIn Buys Refresh.io To Add Predictive Insights To Its Products. In: techcrunch.com. TechCrunch, April 2, 2015, accessed November 23, 2016 .
  26. ^ LinkedIn to Acquire lynda.com. In: press.linkedin.com. LinkedIn, April 9, 2015, accessed November 23, 2016 .
  27. ↑ Ken Yeung: LinkedIn acquires predictive marketing firm Fliptop to boost its Sales Solutions offering. In: venturebeat.com. VentureBeat, August 28, 2015, accessed November 23, 2016 .
  28. ↑ Jordan Novet: LinkedIn acquires recruiting startup Connectifier. In: venturebeat.com. VentureBeat, February 4, 2016, accessed November 23, 2016 .
  29. ↑ Microsoft takeover target LinkedIn swallows PointDrive. In: it-times.de. IT Times, July 27, 2016, accessed November 23, 2016 .
  30. ^ Ingrid Lunden: LinkedIn acquires employee engagement platform Glint. In: TechCrunch. October 8, 2018, accessed November 24, 2019 .
  31. ↑ Alex Wilhelm, Natasha Mascarenhas: LinkedIn Snaps Up Drawbridge, Its Second Known Acquisition In 8 Months. In: Crunchbase News. May 28, 2019, accessed November 24, 2019 .
  32. ↑ About us. LinkedIn, accessed January 21, 2018 .
  33. ↑ LinkedIn argues it has free speech right to email. Mediapost.com, September 19, 2014.
  34. ↑ LinkedIn 'Credit Reports' Give Job Seekers Trouble. Courthouse News Service, October 13, 2014.
  35. ↑ LinkedIn illegally sold your professional data lawsuit claims. News Mic, October 13, 2014.
  36. ↑ LinkedIn's new mobile app called a dream for attackers. New York Times , October 24, 2013.
  37. ↑ LinkedIn reads your mail. PC-Welt , October 28, 2013.
  38. ↑ Stiftung Warentest criticized Facebook, LinkedIn and Myspace golem.de on March 25, 2010.
  39. ↑ Social networks: data protection is often inadequate. Stiftung Warentest , March 24, 2010.
  40. ↑ Russia blocks LinkedIn. In: Spiegel Online . November 17, 2016, accessed November 23, 2016 .
  41. ↑ Andreas Wilkens: Russia is blocking LinkedIn. In: Heise Online. November 17, 2016, accessed November 23, 2016 .
  42. ↑ LinkedIn passwords published on the Internet. FAZ.net, June 6, 2012, accessed June 8, 2012 .
  43. ↑ magr .: Hackers publish stolen LinkedIn passwords on the Internet . In: FAZ . June 8, 2012, p. 16 .
  44. ↑ A vulnerability discovered on LinkedIn. Zeit Online , November 23, 2011.
  45. ↑ Criminals sell 117 million hacked Linkedin passwords. sueddeutsche.de
  46. ↑ 117 million customer data from 2012 LinkedIn hack now disclosed. Winfuture.de, May 18, 2016
  47. ↑ [LinkedIn, Dropbox, Formspring: Hacker arrested] Report on the Winfuture.de portal from October 22, 2016
  48. ↑ In the shadow of Tiananmen, LinkedIn succumbs to China's censorship Businessspectator on June 4, 2014.
  49. ↑ LinkedIn thinking twice about its adoption of China's aggressive censorship. In: The Washington Post . 3rd September 2014.
  50. ↑ LinkedIn may stop censoring China based Users overseas thenextweb.com on September 3, 2014.
  51. ↑ Russia blocks LinkedIn. Zeit Online , November 17, 2016; accessed on April 14, 2018
  52. ↑ Kyrill Martynow: How to pay censorship tax. In: Novaja Gazeta , April 11, 2018 (Russian); accessed on April 14, 2018
  53. ↑ Ronen Steinke: China recruits informers. Retrieved July 24, 2020 .