The office network

Formerly with Apple and ex-Vice-President of PayPal, the payment service used notably on eBay, Reid Hoffman, 42 years old, is nicknamed “the most connected man in all of Silicon Valley”.
This Stanford graduate is a member of the executive boards of ten or so Californian hi-tech companies, including Mozilla, the editor of Firefox. He has personally invested in dozens of such companies, including PayPal, Mozilla Flickr and Facebook.
Launched in 2003, LinkedIn is the leading US professional social network. Professional in that this platform has an enormous audience of businesspeople or persons wishing to consolidate their work networks. Here, contacts are often found by linking sectorial interests. Many job-seeking executives like to peruse the site. With 45 million members throughout the world, LinkedIn takes out first place in this speciality, though it is far behind the 250 million-member mark of Facebook. In Europe alone, LinkedIn records some 11 million subscribers. In France, where LinkedIn is said to have 850,000 members, it is its rival Viadeo that dominates the market with almost 2.5 million users. LinkedIn also has some catching up to do in Germany, in the face of its German competitor Xing. The profile of this type of social network, popular with both indivi-duals and recruitment agencies and head-hunters, is attractive to many: major online economic newspapers have their sights set on professional networking and are interested in offering community functions on their own web sites.
Reid Hoffman nevertheless remains the uncontested father of professional social networks. The founder moreover insists on the concept of “business relationships”, believing that LinkedIn’s offer is very different from its rivals’. Hoffman says that LinkedIn has exceeded the simple business-to-business model to allow users to connect in a collaborative environment where contact can be made with colleagues, clients and suppliers. In short, Reid Hoffman underlines the socialising and human aspect of his network.