Yahoo! Kickstart was a

professional network A professional network service (or, in an Internet context, simply professional network) is a type of social network service that focuses on interactions and relationships for business opportunities and career growth, with less emphasis on activiti ...

created by

Yahoo! Yahoo! (, styled yahoo''!'' in its logo) is an American web services provider. It is headquartered in Sunnyvale, California and operated by the namesake company Yahoo Inc., which is 90% owned by investment funds managed by Apollo Global Man ...

for college students, recent graduates, employers and alumni. The service was similar to

LinkedIn LinkedIn () is an American business and employment-oriented online service that operates via websites and mobile apps. Launched on May 5, 2003, the platform is primarily used for professional networking and career development, and allows job se ...

, initially aimed at connecting students and alumni of the same university professionally, with recruiters joining later in the network's inception. Yahoo! offered a $25,000 prize to whichever college or university that got the greatest number of alumni to sign up before December 31, 2007. Kickstart's "Preview" (

beta Beta (, ; uppercase , lowercase , or cursive ; grc, βῆτα, bē̂ta or ell, βήτα, víta) is the second letter of the Greek alphabet. In the system of Greek numerals, it has a value of 2. In Modern Greek, it represents the voiced labiod ...

) was launched on November 5, 2007 by

's Advanced Products team, based in

San Francisco San Francisco (; Spanish language, Spanish for "Francis of Assisi, Saint Francis"), officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the commercial, financial, and cultural center of Northern California. The city proper is the List of Ca ...

. Yahoo closed down the network in 2008, amidst reports of server downtime and error messages. Users were redirected to

Yahoo! HotJobs Yahoo HotJobs, formerly known as hotjobs.com, was an online job search engine An employment website is a website that deals specifically with employment or careers. Many employment websites are designed to allow employers to post job requiremen ...

as an alternative for jobseekers.

References

External links

Kickstart Homepage
Professional networks Kickstart Defunct social networking services {{socialnetwork-stub