Linkedin Case Study
9 112 006
REV: JANUARY 6, 2012
FRANCOIS BROCHET
JAMES WEBER
LinkedIn Corporation
Every once in a while, a company comes around that transforms an industry in such a way that
investors have difficulty grasping just how big it may one day become [...] We believe LinkedIn can
be one of these companies. Morgan Stanley Research, June 28, 2011
On the evening of July 7, 2011, the price f or LinkedIn s shares closed at $94. This closing price
gave LinkedIn a market capitalization of $8.9 billion: 37.5 times its 2010 revenue and 592 times its
2010 earnings.1 LinkedIn, the 100 million member social networking website for professionals,
had gone public seven weeks earlier. After an eventful first day of trading where trading volume
had exceeded 30 ... Show more content on Helpwriting.net ...
In late 2007, it introduced its Intelligent Applications Platform which enabled web content
developers to create professional focused applications which allowed business partners to embed
LinkedIn applications onto their si tes and also business partners to embed their applications onto
the LinkedIn site.11 By early 2010, LinkedIn had introduced applications to enable members to
access its services through mobile devices including iPhones, Palm, and Blackberry. 12
Since its early days, LinkedIn had attracted members from around the world. The company
promoted its global nature by offering its site in six languages: English, Spanish, German, French,
Portuguese, and Italian.13 In early 2011, LinkedIn had offices in Australia, Canada, India, Ireland,
the
Netherlands and the United Kingdom.14
In early 2011, LinkedIn, already the largest professional oriented social networking site, was
growing fast. The company had 990 employees (524 in engineering, product development and
customer operations, 313 in sales and marketing, and 153 in general and administrative), 15 double
the amount of one year earlier. It had over 100 million members 16 in 200 countries and was
adding over one million new members every 10 days. In 2010, the company earned $15 million on
sales of $243 million; up from a loss of $4.5 million on sales of $79 million in 2008. First quarter
2011 sales doubled over the first quarter from the prior year. Over 50% of members
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