14 DAY TRIAL // The social networking wars have been over for almost a year now, when it became clear that Facebook was unstoppable. While its competitors tried various strategies to remain relevant, Facebook kept on growing, reaching about 500 million users. But the niche social network LinkedIn kept on growing as well, not at the same rate as Facebook, obviously, but still at a decent pace.
The professional social network now claims to have 70 million users, showing that there is still room to grow in this segment, as long as you don’t take Facebook head-on.
The social network’s homepage now reads, “Over 70 million professionals use LinkedIn to exchange information, ideas and opportunities.” The message is clear, the site is showing no signs of stopping. The previous milestone was at 60 million users, which it reached in February this year. Ten million new users in a few months is no small feat. It had 50 million last fall.
These users mostly came from outside its home market, the US, as the site has seen the biggest growth internationally. It has even opened offices in a couple of countries where it’s seeing the highest adoption rate, The Netherlands and India.
The site has been reluctant in adding too many new features or implementing wide changes, but that’s to be expected from a social network focused on the professional market. That said, it hasn’t been standing still either, getting cozier with Twitter and having launched an API to help developers create new applications and services around LinkedIn data.
It fact, it’s data that is seen as one of the site’s greatest assets and it’s easy to see why. With 70 million users and over one million company profiles created, it is sitting on a treasure chest of data that could be worth a lot of money to the right company. [via TechCrunch]