This interview was recorded in late 2008 at LinkedIn’s Mountain View office.

Reid Hoffman co-founded LinkedIn in his living room in Silicon Valley in 2002. The company went IPO in 2011. This was the first time an American social network company is going public to raise money. Hoffman owned about 20 percent of LinkedIn shares before it went IPO.

Hoffman worked at PayPal and eBay before co-founding LinkedIn. He is currently executive chairman of LinkedIn, and is a partner at Greylock Partners, a venture capital firm.

Is LinkedIn a clone of Hoffman’s brain as an article in LA Times put it? We wanted to find out when we spoke to him in this long-ranging 2-part interview with him.

In Part-1 of the interview Hoffman talks about the general philosophy behind LinkedIn, how he started it and their plans to expand in India.He also talks about other social network and where LinkedIn fits into the social network landscape. Here is how Hoffman put it: “Now the metaphor that I frequently use when we are talking about the three current giants’ is: MySpace is the bar, Facebook is home and LinkedIn is the office.”

LISTEN: Reid Hoffman on LinkedIn Part-1

 

A lot has changed since we did this interview in 2008. MySpace is not a dominant player it once was. In 2011 MySpace was purchased by Specific Media Group and Justin Timberlake. There are lots of new social media players today and Twitter leads the pack. The social media world today is vastly different from what it was in 2008.

This interview was originally published by LiveMint, a leading Indian business newspaper.

Photo credit – Reidhoffman.org