Many people may not know this, but LinkedIn was country email list born even before its more famous social “colleagues”, Facebook, YouTube and Twitter. The first time that the business social network appeared on the web was in 2002 , but the platform was not launched until May of the following year. One of its founders, Reid Hoffman , who at the time was already working on the board of directors of Apple, Google, Paypal and Ebay, got together with some trusted colleagues and created what would later become the largest business platform ever to exist.
LinkedIn's rise to success was anything but easy: in the first month it only had 4,500 members, and in general the launch got off to a very slow start. Hoffman and his peer group, however, did not lose heart, and the turning point came when Sequoia Capital, one of the largest American Venture Capitals, invested 4.7 million dollars in the project. Starting in late 2003 , LinkedIn gave its members the ability to add a personal address book on the portal to invite colleagues and friends to join the social platform , groups began to form and in no time LinkedIn reached 1 million members.
The thinking minds behind the platform and how to make the most of the huge sum of money they received, first introduced Premium services and various paid options in 2005 to help companies better select the profiles they needed.
These improvements allowed LinkedIn to increase its visibility and reach and exceed 4 million active users, and so it began its climb.
But what does LinkedIn mean? Why did its creators call it that?
