LinkedIn hits 300-mn member mark

Professional social networking site LinkedIn, now has 300 million members, the company announced yesterday, up from the 277 million it counted several months ago as part of its fourth-quarter results.

In all, LinkedIn had gained around 100 million new members over the last 15 months, averaging 6.7 million new users per month.

As regards where the job seekers and recommenders, recruiters, and more came from, LinkedIn noted that over half of the site's members were international users.

Only 100 million members (one-third) were in the US.

Further, a good chunk of LinkedIn's total user base was accessing the site on mobile.

"Later this year, we are going to hit our mobile moment, where mobile accounts for more than 50 percent of all global traffic," LinkedIn senior vice president Deep Nishar said in a blog post.

"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. Every day we see an average of 15 million profile views, 1.45 million job views, and 44,000 job applications in over 200 countries through mobile."

Meanwhile, some interesting stats from the professional network:

• Five years ago, LinkedIn members were mostly male, however in 2013 it was almost an even split between men and women.
• Over half of the network's members are resident outside the US
• The number two for membership, five years ago was the UK but now India and Brazil took second and third slots.
• Information Technology and Service was and continued to be the largest industry represented on LinkedIn, but there was a big shift in everything under that.
• Computer Software, Telecom and Finance had dropped out of the top 5 industries yielding the positions to Healthcare, Construction, Education Management and Accounting.