LinkedIn appoints new board member

SAN FRANCISCO, USA: LinkedIn, the networking site aimed at professionals, is appointing the chief marketing officer from Netflix Inc as its second independent board director, chief executive Jeff Weiner said on Monday.

The site, with more than 65 million members, is among the Web's fastest-growing social networking sites along with Facebook and Twitter, fueling speculation that it is positioning itself for an initial public offering.

An IPO "is not in the front of mind," Weiner told the Reuters Global Technology Summit in San Francisco on Monday.

LinkedIn will have 900 employees by the end of the year, up from about 500 at the start of the year, said Weiner, who took the helm of the Mountain View, California-based firm in June 2009.

Weiner said the firm would soon announce that Netflix CMO Leslie Kilgore is joining the board as an independent director. She will be the second independent director on the six-strong board after LinkedIn appointed Skip Battle, former Ask.com chief executive and also a Netflix director, to its board last month.