LinkedIn is a social networking website for people in professional occupations. Founded in December 2002 and launched in May 2003, it is mainly used for professional networking. As of June 2012, LinkedIn reports more than 175 million registered users in more than 200 countries and territories.

The site is available in English, French, German, Italian, Portuguese, Spanish, Dutch, Swedish, Romanian, Russian, Turkish, Japanese, Czech, Polish, Korean, Bahasa Indonesia, and Bahasa Malaysia.Quantcast reports LinkedIn has 21.4 million monthly unique U.S. visitors and 47.6 million globally. In June 2011, LinkedIn had 33.9 million unique visitors, up 63 percent from a year earlier and surpassing MySpace. LinkedIn filed for an initial public offering in January 2011 and traded its first shares on May 19, 2011, under the NYSE symbol “LNKD”.

With more than 161 million subscribers LinkedIn is ahead of its competitors Viadeo (35 million) and XING (10 million). The membership grows by approximately two new members every second.About half of the members are in the United States and 11 million are from Europe. With 3 million users, India has the fastest-growing network of users as of 2009. The Netherlands has the highest adoption rate per capita outside the US at 30%. LinkedIn recently reached 4 million users in UK, 1 million in Spain,and nearly 1 million in Pakistan.

As of March 2011 the service had 44 million users in the US and 56 million outside.

As of October 2011, LinkedIn has over 14 million students and recent college graduates as members.