LinkedIn adds Battle to its board

Friday 09 April 2010 | By Heidi Scott, Gosh! Media Copywriter

Business networking site LinkedIn announced yesterday that it has added Skip Battle, the 66-year-old former CEO of Ask.com, to its board of directors.

Battle - who is a current board member of several publicly listed Internet companies including Netflix Inc, Expedia Inc and OpenTable Inc - is the first independent director to join LinkedIn. He joins investors Mark Kvamme and David Sze, founder Reid Hoffman and CEO Jeff Weiner.

According to Reuters, Battle actually joined the board several weeks ago, but the news was kept under wraps until yesterday. The New York Times reported that LinkedIn CEO Jeff Weiner had said in an interview that Battle represented the first of several additional independent board members the company hoped to add, providing the firm with valuable experience as it expands its business internationally.

Weiner emphasised that adding independent directors was not a sign that LinkedIn was heading towards a public offering; he said that the company did not need to raise funds, with the $76 million of venture capital it raised in 2008 still intact. LinkedIn's CEO also said that the company had hired more than 100 staff this year and that the organisation planned to increase its employee total to 850 by the end of 2010, 350 more than at the end of last year.

The fast-growing social networking company has more than 65 million members and is estimated to be worth around $1.3 billion. Unlike Facebook, MySpace and Twitter, LinkedIn focuses on networking between business people, earning revenue from ad sales, premium subscriptions and licensing.

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