The company has put together an interesting visual timeline that you can peruse here. It begins in 2002 when Hoffman recruited a team of old colleagues from SocialNet and PayPal to work on the idea that would eventually become LinkedIn. In the early days, they were sometimes getting as few as 20 signups a day.

In 2009, Jeff Weiner joined as President, and would then become CEO, a title he currently holds. Two years later came the IPO.

Reid Hoffman writes on the LinkedIn blog:

Ten years ago, I co-founded LinkedIn in my living room with the mission of connecting the world’s professionals to make them more productive and successful. Inspired by the invaluable role relationships played in our own careers, we launched LinkedIn with the tagline “Relationships matter.”

At the end of our first month, we had 4,500 members in the network. 10 years later, we’re honored and humbled that so many of you have made LinkedIn a part of your daily professional lives.

Today, hundreds of millions of professionals around the world are turning to LinkedIn to connect with each other, manage their identities, get insights they need to be great at what they do, and find their dream jobs. I’m continually inspired by our members’ career aspirations and achievements.

LinkedIn currently boasts 225 million members, and says it is growing by a rate of two members every second.

The company’s stock is up 0.23% in pre-market trading.

Take a look at the evolution of the homepage:

Anyway, Google is now officially 9, having launched in beta on April 1st, 2004. In celebration of that, Google has posted a fun little infographic that deals with the evolution of the product.

“Gmail was inspired by one user’s feedback that she was tired of struggling to find emails buried deep in her inbox. So we built a new email that leveraged the power of Google Search. You told us you were tired of spam, so we set to tackling that, and today your feedback makes it possible for Gmail to filter out well over 99% of incoming spam. You also said that you needed tools to deal with information overload, so we introduced Priority Inbox to help you manage your email (and we’re still exploring new ways to it even easier),” says Google software engineer Zohair Hyder.

As you march through the past 9 years of Gmail, you remember that it took Google nearly two years to add Gchat to Gmail, and how long it took for Google to open up signups Gmail (three years after the beta launch). Not everything that’s happened with Gmail has been a hit with users (for a recent example, check out the reaction to the new compose box), but with hundreds of millions of active users, I guess we can say that we’re pretty happy that Gmail is around. It’s a lot more useful than most 9-year-olds I know, let’s put it that way.

Check out a trip down Gmail memory lane below (click to enlarge):

After some time as an iOS-only service, Instagram finally launched on Android in April of 2012 and quickly racked up over a million downloads in less than 24 hours.

Thus began the great, but short Instagram platform war that saw iOS users whine about their beloved service opening up to the Plebian droiders. In less than six months, Instagram for Android hit 50 million downloads.

And now, in just one year, Android users have risen to become almost half the user base. The photo-sharing network broke the 100 million monthly active user milestone about a month ago, so we can assume that almost 50 million active users are snapping, filtering, and uploading via Android.

In a celebratory blog post, Philip McAllister of Instagram’s Android team acknowledges that the the Android community has been vital to spreading the service around the world:

Instagram for Android has helped make this community more global than ever. Major events such as Brazil’s Círio de Nazaré festival, the 85th birthday of Thailand’s King Bhumibol, and a streak of severe thunderstorms throughout Malaysia have been captured by Android Instagrammers and shared to global audiences like never before. We’ve also seen Android Instagrammers contribute to the community in innovative and powerful ways, including @daveedgamboa’s incredible jumpstagrams around Southern California, photos of England’s beautiful Lancashire county from @adamgrayson and even a glimpse into the life of Kenya’s nomads from @grantsmind.

So, Android Instagram users: How’s your first year been?

Today, you can grab 18 “app of the day” apps for free. The apps that Amazon is offering for free range from $0.99 to $9.95, and include games, productivity apps, and more.

We’re celebrating our 2nd birthday today with Free App of the Day Greatest Hits. One day only, Friday March 22. amzn.to/YdnzI1

— Amazon Appstore (@amazonappstore) March 22, 2013

Last year, on the Appstore’s first birthday, Amazon celebrated with an entire week of discounted apps. This time around, you have a smaller window to cash in on the occasion. The free apps will only be free for today, Friday, March 22nd.

Amazon’s Appstore launched on March 22nd, 2011 and almost immediately pissed off Apple, who ended up protesting Amazon’s use of “Appstore.” Now, two years later, everything has been settled and the world is still spinning on its axis. Here’s to many more years, Amazon Appstore.

Twitter, which first began with a tweet from co-founder Jack Dorsey back in March of 2006, now boasts over 200 million monthly active users. Today, they’re also announcing that tweets per day has hit an impressive 400 million.

Here’s where it all started:

just setting up my twttr

— Jack Dorsey (@jack) March 21, 2006

“As we’ve grown, Twitter has become a true global town square — a public place to hear the latest news, exchange ideas and connect with people all in real time. This is where you come to connect with the world at large. Get on your soapbox to critique elected officials, or go sotto voce to the neighbor next to you. And as in other gathering places, commerce happens too (and jokes and art-making and debating, and — you get the idea),” says Twitter in a blog post.

Last March, when Twitter turned 6, they announced 140 million active users. Today, on their 7th birthday, they can boast well over 200 million active users. Twitter says that it’s a steep trajectory that they could have “only dreamed about back in 2006.”

Take a look at Twitter’s video below, which takes you from Jack Dorsey’s first tweet in 2006, the the first use of the hashtag in 2007, to a funny exchange between Oprah and Shaq.

It’s also the birthday of television legend Fred McFeely Rogers.

Mr. Rogers was a wonderful and fascinating human being. And as Mental Floss shows, there are plenty of things that you probably didn’t know about him. Did you know his middle name was McFeely? I sure didn’t.

He has managed to make his way into the Twitter Trends today, and even Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey has tweeted out a quote:

Here’s what some other Twitter users are sharing:

Now go read the lyrics to Floyd the Barber and Hairspray Queen.

Soon after launching their new ecommerce platform Facebook Gifts, the social network began suggesting that you send friends a gift when it’s their birthday. Suddenly, a cheesy Timeline post ceased to be enough. Facebook wanted to promote the new Gifts platform by attaching it to birthdays – which is understandable.

Now, it looks like they’re taking it a step further by suggesting that you gift friends with a Starbucks e-gift, specifically.

Facebook told Business Insider that this is an “experiment.”

We’ve noticed that if the birthday boy or girl “likes” Starbucks, that information will show up alongside the Starbucks logo. That way, you’ll know that getting him/her a Starbucks gift card would be a good idea. You know, because they “like” it.

It’s unclear what the arrangement is here, and whether Starbucks (and presumably any other Facebook Gifts partner) would pay for the birthday suggestions placement in the future. As with all Facebook “tests” or “experiments,” there’s always the chance that it will never reach a large audience. But something about this one makes me feel like we’ll be seeing more and more of it as Facebook looks to further promote and monetize Gifts.

“We had the audacity to believe that we could change things. We believed that a community of people who understood the power of the Web, and who put people above profits, could build something amazing,” writes Johnathan Nightingale, Vice President of Firefox Engineering. “Today, on Firefox’s 8th birthday, we’re proud to say that our mission hasn’t changed, but the Web has. These days, hundreds of millions of people trust Firefox with their online lives and they encourage their friends and family to do the same. We still put people first and, with the support of our Firefox fans, we drive the Web towards openness and interoperability.”

“It’s hard work,” adds Nightingale. “But in the last year, Firefox has gotten faster, more secure, friendlier to use and more fun to personalize. We’ve also brought the speed and power of Firefox to millions of smartphone users with Firefox for Android. In the next year, we’re going to take Firefox even further.”

Nightingale links to the original Firefox 1.0 press release, if you want to take a trip down memory lane. Here’s a sample:

The Mozilla Foundation, a non-profit organization dedicated to preserving choice and promoting innovation on the Internet, today announced the worldwide availability of the Mozilla Firefox 1.0 web browser. Development of Firefox has been driven by a desire for a more robust, user-friendly and trustworthy web experience. Mozilla Firefox 1.0 arrives on the heels of last month’s highly successful Preview Release that over eight million people downloaded, contributing significantly to the final phase of its open source development.

Today’s announcement marks the worldwide launch of Mozilla Firefox-with immediate availability for Windows, Mac OS X and Linux-as a free download from mozilla.org and by CD from the Mozilla Store. Firefox is now available in over a dozen languages, with many more on the way.

“We are delighted to be announcing this major milestone for the Mozilla Foundation and for the Firefox browser, which has been made possible thanks to the tireless effort of hundreds of community volunteers and developers around the world,” commented Mitchell Baker, president of the Mozilla Foundation. “Now millions more will be able to enjoy a better web experience.”

When was the last time you got a web browser from a CD?

Last month, Mozilla talked about some future plans for Firefox, which includes the Social API and Facebook Messenger for Firefox. More on that here.

When Facebook announced Gifts, they attached the tagline “Celebrate birthdays, new jobs, and other big moments.” There’s no denying that the success of Gifts relies heavily on users feeling compelled to send gifts to their friends. Birthdays, anniversaries, engagements, and new babies are just some of the life events that may compel a user to fork over the cash to send a gift via Facebook.

On the desktop version of Facebook, getting users to notice these types of events is no problem. They are displayed right there to the right of the news feed. Facebook just recently began to show events other than birthdays in this area.

But on mobile, birthdays and other events are not displayed prominently, and are instead either relocated to the events tab or not displayed at all. That’s all changing, mainly due to Gifts.

For both Android and iOS users, Facebook has begun to display birthdays at the top of users’ news feeds. But here’s the catch: you’ll only see it if you’re a part of a small group of users in the early test for Gifts. Android users will see the Gifts icon next to the birthday announcement, beckoning them to buy their buddy a present. iOS users can only receive gifts at this time. (Photo via TechCrunch)

It’s probably a good thing that Facebook unearthed birthdays on mobile, as it’s rare for anyone to check their events tab daily. This way, mobile users won’t miss these types of announcements. But this move is all about monetization. As more and more users access Facebook via mobile, Facebook has to figure out how to make money off them. They’ve already had a public struggle to monetize mobile via ads, but Gifts is something entirely different. It requires user interaction and user choice. Facebook can’t force a user to buy their friend a new shirt for her birthday like they can force a Sponsored Story into their mobile news feed. But placing birthdays (and probably other event announcements as well) at the top of their news feeds is one way to increase the chance that they will buy a gift (and earn a cut for Facebook in the process).