LinkedIn went international in the late 2000s, opening an office first in the UK in 2008 and introducing Spanish and French language versions the same year. It took a while for the service to find its feet via innovations like allowing users to upload their contacts books (2004), as well as jobs listings (2005) and public profiles (2006). LinkedIn was originally set up as a place where users could share their CVs and establish a network of people who could recommend them. But where they and others like Friendster went after the consumer market, Hoffman's venture was always focused on business. LinkedIn launched in May 2003, just ahead of Myspace and Facebook. This was a period when everyone was realizing the importance of individual interconnection and peer-to-peer interactions. This helped him to co-found LinkedIn on Decemwith a team of former SocialNet colleagues, becoming its first chief executive and later executive chairman. Hoffman went on to become a senior manager at PayPal, and made a substantial amount of money when it was bought by eBay in 2002. SocialNet was a dating and professional connections site, but folded two years later after failing to find a big enough userbase in those early days of the web.

entrepreneur who worked on an early social media platform for Apple before launching one of his own in 1997. It was the brainchild of Reid Hoffman, a U.S.

But there's no denying that the business networking site has gone the distance: it is now 20 years since it was founded in Silicon Valley. When someone says social media, you probably don't immediately think of LinkedIn. This article was originally published on The Conversation.

Linkedin social networking sites