Microsoft has appointed Reid Hoffman, co-founder of LinkedIn, to its board of directors. Mr. Hoffman will be appointed to the Regulatory and Public Policy Committee.

Mr. Hoffman, 49, has been with Greylock Partners, where he is currently a partner, for the past seven years. He co-founded LinkedIn in 2002, and before that he served as an executive vice president at PayPal.

Mr. Hoffman currently serves on the boards of Edmodo, Convoy and Blockstream. He also serves on the boards of the non-profits Wrapp and Kiva.org, and is the chair of the West Coast advisory board for QuestBridge.

Adding Mr. Hoffman to the board increases Microsoft’s board to 12 members. The company’s board of directors currently includes John Thompson, Microsoft independent chairman; William Gates, Microsoft founder and technology advisor; G. Mason Morfit, president, ValueAct Capital; Satya Nadella, chief executive officer, Microsoft; Charles Noski, former vice chairman of Bank of America; Sandra Peterson, executive vice president, group worldwide chairman for Johnson & Johnson; Helmut Panke, former chairman of the board of management at BMW; Charles Scharf, former chief executive officer of Visa; John Stanton, chairman, Trilogy Equity Partners and Trilogy International Partners; Teri List-Stoll, executive vice president and chief financial officer of Gap; and Padmasree Warrior, chief development officer of NextEV, and chief executive officer of U.S. for NextEV.

[Image courtesy: Wikipedia/Joi Ito]