Well, looks like some folks over at LinkedIn are going to be busy updating their profiles. Reid Hoffman’s will now include Founder and CEO of LinkedIn followed by Chairman of the Board of LinkedIn followed by interim CEO of LinkedIn and now landing at Executive Chairman of LinkedIn. Good thing Reid has stuck around to fill in the gaps.
LinkedIn has now announced the move of making president, Jeff Weiner, the new CEO of the company. Weiner came over from Yahoo in January and this move is not raising any eyebrows. Hoffman had stepped into the CEO role for the past 6 months or so after Dan Nye left in December of last year after two years in the post. Now the transition to Weiner looks complete.
“LinkedIn was founded to harness the power of the Internet to create a tool that would help individuals become more effective and successful professionals,” Hoffman said in a release. “Over the past six months, Jeff has done an exceptional job leading the company and I look forward to continuing the work that we have begun together.”
LinkedIn claims 42 million members which makes their audience bigger than Twitter but far smaller than Facebook’s 200 million plus members. What LinkedIn can claim that neither of the other two can is that it
hopes to be profitable this year for the second year in a row; it makes money not only from ads, but from premium subscriptions and “corporate solutions.”
Profitable? For a second year in a row? Not often we use that word here in the present tense when it comes to social media companies let alone talking about starting a ‘profitable year streak’. In the past, Hoffman has expressed the desire to go public and last year was looking for a billion dollar valuation when raising $53 million. If you want to play the “What is LinkedIn worth now?” game go right ahead. In this market it looks like anyone’s guess is as good as the next.
