What is LinkedIn? LinkedIn is one of the largest, on-line, professional social networking sites. I use many on-line sites to promote my work and add links to my latest blog posts. Almost everyone is familiar with sites such as Twitter and Facebook, but I also found quite a few of my friends using LinkedIn.
I had signed up for a LinkedIn profile a few years ago but never really used the site much. I started looking for a new job a couple of months ago, and noticed that quite a few of my writing and marketing acquaintances have a LinkedIn profile. I had been putting off updating my LinkedIn profile until earlier today when I was applying for a job on-line and the job site wanted to use my LinkedIn profile. So I popped right over to the website to update all my LinkedIn information.
A Few LinkedIn Facts
- LinkedIn started out in the living room of co-founder Reid Hoffman in 2002.
- The site officially launched on May 5, 2003. At the end of the first month in operation, LinkedIn had a total of 4,500 members in the network.
- As of December 31, 2011 (the end of the fourth quarter), professionals are signing up to join LinkedIn at a rate that is faster than two new members per second.
- The company is publicly held and has a diversified business model with revenues coming from hiring solutions, marketing solutions and premium subscriptions.
- As of February 9, 2012, LinkedIn operates the world’s largest professional network on the Internet with more than 150 million members in over 200 countries and territories.
- Sixty percent of LinkedIn members are located outside of the United States, as of December 31, 2011.
- LinkedIn members did nearly 4.2 billion professionally-oriented searches on the platform in 2011.
- As of February 9, 2012, LinkedIn counts executives from all 2011 Fortune 500 companies as members; its corporate hiring solutions are used by 82 of the Fortune 100 companies.
- More than 2 million companies have LinkedIn Company Pages.
- LinkedIn represents a valuable demographic for marketers with an affluent & influential membership.
- As of December 31, 2011, hundreds of thousands of job applications have been submitted using Apply With LinkedIn.
Here is some of the information that you can list on your LinkedIn profile:
- Current jobs
- Past jobs
- Summary, which can be used to post your resume
- Experience
- Education
- Skills & Expertise
- Personal information
Lynn Smythe's LinkedIn profile: www.linkedin.com/in/lynnsmythe


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