LinkedIn is a website for social networking for people with professional occupations. It was launched in May of 2003 and as of January 2013 LinkedIn has more than 200 million users in over 200 countries and territories. The site is available in 17 different languages. Around half of the members are in the US and Europe has around 11 million. India has had the fastest-growing network of users with 300 million as of 2009. The membership is growing so fast that there are two new members every second.

One of the sites purposes is to allow users to keep a list of contacts with whom they have connections. Users has the ability to invite anyone to become a connection, whether a site user or not. If the invitee were to select “Spam” or “I don’t know,” it will count against the inviter. This can result in the inviter’s site to be closed or restricted if it receives too many of these responses.

A users list of connections can be used in multiple ways:

• A contact network is built through direct connections; this means the connections of each of their connections are second-degree connections. Therefore, the connections of second-degree connections are third-degree connections. This is used to introduce someone to a person through a mutual contact.
• Within the user’s profile, they can upload their resume to showcase their work and experiences.
• This help find jobs, people and business opportunities.
• Employers also use LinkedIn to search for potential candidates and list jobs.
• For identification users can upload photos and view photos of others.
• Users can follow companies which allow them to get notifications about offers available.
• Users can save jobs or “bookmark” them if they are interested in applying.

Interest groups can be formed with a large amount of them being related to employment. However there is a wide range of mainly career and professional issues. For both academic and corporate alumni there are currently 128,000 groups. Within the group there is a limited form of discussion that is also monitored by the group owner and managers. Groups can be private or open to the public Internet.