LinkedIn reaches the 300 million user mark

The social network now has only 3 billion users to go before it reaches the entire global workforce

(Updated to reflect comment from LinkedIn)

LinkedIn has made a major announcement regarding its user base. The company is picking up its growth, and is getting closer to the other social networks, but when you look a little closer it may not be as big of an achievement as you thought.

The professional social network has reached a total of 300 million users, it was revealed in a blogposton Friday. That means the company has a mere three billion users to go to reach its goal of having every worker on the site.

“While this is an exciting moment, we still have a long way to go to realize our vision of creating economic opportunity for every one of the 3.3 billion people in the global workforce,” LinkedIn’s Deep Nishar wrote

Around two-third of the 300 million users came from outside the United States, which is a good sign for LinkedIn's potential future growth as well.

Growth is also picking up. The network reached the 100 million mark in March 2011, just ahead of its IPO, and then took nearly another two years to reach 200 million in January of last year. Now, around 15 months later, it has added the next 100 million.

The only problem is that what LinkedIn is talking about here are total registered users, whereas most networks use the monthly active user (MAU) metric, as it is more indicative of what kinds of numbers and traffic advertisers can expect to see on the site.

As of the fourth quarter of 2013, LinkedIn had only 187 million active users, putting it behind Twitter, which has 241 million, and way behind Facebook, which has roughly 1.25 billion MAUs. VatorNews has reached out to LinkedIn to find out how many users are currently active. A company spokesperson confirmed that number of active users, but declined to offer an updated figure.

So what's next for LinkedIn? The company has a few things in mind.

First, it is anticipating its "mobile moment," where more than 50% of traffic is from handheld devices. LinkedIn is already seeing an average of 15 million profile views, 1.45 million job views and 44,000 job applications through mobile on a daily basis. 

"Already, our members in dozens of locations including Costa Rica, Malaysia, Singapore, Sweden, United Arab Emirates and the United Kingdom, use LinkedIn more on their mobile devices than on their desktop computers," said Nishar. 

LinkedIn is also looking to expand its global footprint, specifically in China, where it launched a beta version of its site earlier this year. 

"Our global footprint gives us the necessary elements to build the world’s first Economic Graph. As we continue to grow, we’ll be able to keep improving this valuable map of the connections between people, companies, jobs, skills, educational institutions and professional knowledge in the global economy," Nishar said.

The company also provided an infographic with some demographic breakdowns:

• The site is now 56% male, and 44% female, down from 61% male five years ago. 
• It's top five industries are information and technology services, hospital and health care, construction, education management, and accounting
• It's top membership is still in the United States, followed by India, Brazil, Great Britain and Canada

(Image source: blog.linkedin.com)