LinkedIn follows in Marissa Mayer’s footsteps, gives all 3,500 employees a free iPad mini

Social networking giant LinkedIn has announced that it is giving all of its 3,500 employees worldwide a free iPad mini.

According to Business Insider, the gift came after the company reported a massive quarter in which it beat revenue expectations by $US25 million.

“We wanted to acknowledge the hard work and accomplishments of all of our employees in 2012,” a company spokesperson said.

“During today’s bi-weekly All Hands meeting, we surprised our employees with iPad minis as a small gesture of the company’s gratitude for their contributions.

The generous gift comes after Yahoo! CEO Marissa Mayer gave her employees a free smartphone in September last year.

Under Mayer’s offer, staff got to choose between an Apple iPhone 5, one of three Android smartphones (including Samsung’s Galaxy S3, HTC One X or HTC EVO 4G LTE) or a Nokia Lumia 920 running Windows Phone 8.

At the time, Mayer cited improved employee familiarity with common smartphones as a key benefit of the program.

“A few weeks ago, we said that we would look into smartphone penetration rates globally and take those rates into account when deciding on corporate phones,” Mayer said in an internal memo at the time.

“Ideally, we’d like our employees to have devices similar to our users, so we can think and work as the majority of our users do.”