Linkedin Blog

Hi Everyone. I’m writing today to announce the launch of LinkedIn’s applications platform that will enable over 30 million professionals on LinkedIn to communicate, collaborate, and share information even better than before.

This initial roll out features productivity applications that range from gathering information that professionals around you are generating to enhancing your abilities to collaborate and communicate more effectively. You’ll be able to work much more closely with your contacts on LinkedIn with tools such as file sharing, project management, business trips and many more.

I’d like to announce today the launch of our new search platform, currently released to a small percentage of our LinkedIn users. In addition, a certain percentage of the remaining users can explore the new search experience by simply clicking on the “Try LinkedIn’s new People Search” link at the top of search results pages.

As the largest global professional network, we’ve had the privilege of having millions of users enter over a billion professional search queries, and we’ve been working hard to build a much more robust professional people search engine. We interviewed lots of users and aggregated thousand of pieces of feedback. The end result is a completely redesigned search experience aimed at making it easier and faster to find the most relevant professionals that you’re looking for.

I’m happy to announce today that we’ve received strategic investments in LinkedIn totaling $22.7 million from market leaders in the enterprise software, investment banking and business information sectors; all of whom believe in the power of LinkedIn as a way to connect professionals and help them be effective. This round of funding includes world class strategic investors Goldman Sachs, The McGraw-Hill Companies, and SAP ventures; as well as a re-investment by Bessemer Venture Partners.

This financing is a follow-on of the Series D round of funding we announced in June of 2008, in which we raised $53 million. Led by Bain Capital Ventures LinkedIn’s Series D financing round has raised $75.7 million. You can find my thoughts on our Series D announcement here.

The LinkedIn blog is broken down into two broad categories: Using LinkedIn (Features, Answers, and Users) and LinkedIn News (Press, People and Events). Our primary focus is to bring you breaking news on every features that maximizes your LinkedIn experience. In addition, we’ll also be covering some of the recent press mentions we’ve received under the Press category.

Let’s start off with a post on the business of productivity (USA Today) written by Jon Swartz, which references LinkedIn’s presence in that space.