Who Introduced You to LinkedIn?

Do you even remember who sent you the very first invitation to join LinkedIn?

I didn't.

The invitation seemed so inconsequential at the moment, I'm not sure I even gave it a second thought.

Until recently.

Without question, LinkedIn has been the most prolific recruiting tool in the last 12 months of my career. Yet, the idea of not knowing who sent me the first invitation just kept gnawing at me (it's the same feeling I have every year the Sooners lose in a bowl game). But I digress.

So I decided to call my friend, George Seiters, who happens to be extremely connected at LinkedIn. Well, he should be - he works there. I figured if anybody could get me a bit of history about my account, it would be George.

Sure enough. A few days later I received an email from George. My reply, "Wow, really?!"

So, here's a big thank you to one cool friend and awesome recruiter, Michelle Balatico-Hayes!

Thanks Michelle! You sent me the very first LinkedIn invitation that made me scratch my head and say,

"Now why in the world would I want to join a network like this?!"

Well, a few thousand connections later, it all makes sense.

So, who introduced you to LinkedIn?



P.S. If you haven't joined my "WirelessJobs" Group on LinkedIn, please accept this invitation! We're growing like crazy and would like to see if you can help us top the 5,000 member mark! In fact, I'll do a special post and recognize the person that becomes the 5,000th member to join!

(Click HERE to join)

VC's opt-in for LinkedIn

Professional social network LinkedIn will announce a previously rumored $12.8 million round of financing on Monday, led by Bessemer and the European Founders Fund. The company, which has been profitable since March 2006, has raised $13.4 million in two previous rounds of financing, bringing the total to more than $26 million.

The company had something north of $10 million in revenue in 2006, and says they’ll do substantially more than that in 2007. LinkedIn Answers, which launched earlier this month, has been a huge success, they say. LinkedIn has 70 employees, up from 45 a year ago. They claim 9 million worldwide users, and are adding 100,000 or so new users per week.

The valuation of the financing round is not being disclosed by the company, but it is rumored to be around $250 million.

LinkedIn’s European competitor, Xing, is currently generating about €2.8 million in revenue per fiscal quarter, or $3.6 million. The company was valued at about $200 million when it went public in December 2006.

source: TechCrunch