Our LinkedIn statistics below will take you through the company’s formation all the way up to and past Microsoft’s acquisition of the social media platform. Get to know LinkedIn better.

LinkedIn history facts

• LinkedIn was founded on December 28th 2002 and launched on May 5th 2003
• It was founded by Reid Hoffman, Allen Blue, Jean-Luc Vaillan, Eric Ly, and Konstantin Guericke
• In November 2003 LinkedIn received investment from Sequoia Capital
• The site saw a slow start with just 6,000 sign ups in the first month
• After the first six months, this had grown to 37k 
• In early 2005, LinkedIn launched LinkedIn Jobs, their first attempt to make money from the site
• 2006 sees the company make a profit for the first time
• The company went public in May 2011 with the first share traded at $45
• In June 2016 it was announced that Microsoft would be buying LinkedIn for $26.2bn, or $196 per share, their most expensive acquisition to date
• LinkedIn contributed $2.3bn in revenue for Microsoft in 2017
• By this point LinkedIn had over 450m users, with it now currently sitting at 562m
• Jeff Weiner is the current CEO of LinkedIn