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LinkedIn Growth Surpasses Facebook

Posted by Nick O'Neill on April 28th, 2008 4:58 PM

Mario Sundar, the community evangelist for LinkedIn, has posted a chart of Nielsen’s March ratings which shows LinkedIn surpassing Facebook in growth. According to Nielsen, LinkedIn grew a whopping 319 percent since last year. This is in comparison to Facebook which grew almost 100 percent.

Percentages can be misleading though and these numbers also can be highly inaccurate as show with Google’s recent quarter and Comscore’s blunder. The report shows that Facebook only had approximately 25 million users in March, whereas Compete.com says Facebook had 31 million unique viewers the same month. No matter what numbers you look at though, LinkedIn is experiencing phenomenal growth.

This could be a direct result of the growth of social networking sites into demographics that traditionally stay away from social networking. As I wrote about this morning, the Boomer generation has an increasing number of people on social networks. Users over 45 now account for a whopping 31 percent of LinkedIn’s user base. Which demographic is experiencing the most growth though is currently an unknown.

Whatever the case, social networking is still booming and LinkedIn has proven its ability to experience continued growth even in the face of Facebook where business networking in now pervasive. Perhaps not all social networks need their own platform!

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    I believe what we are seeing is a dawning of the realization that what was once labeled purely "social networking" has true business value- or at least perceived, probable business value- worth exploring. The more that is accepted as legit for business, the more people become willing to sign up and advance themselves without concern that they are looking (to their employers) like they are disloyal and want another job.

    Were Facebook to go "pro"- that is, to allow for a resume-style professional view of the profile, allow for users to determine for each friend whether they can toggle between pro and personal, see pro only, or see personal only-, which I would recommend, it could experience a new growth curve as well. (It could also experience a great revenue opportunity in the talent and jobs market.)

    I network online primarily for professional (social, but professional) reasons. My LinkedIn network is bigger, true, but my Facebook network is more committed- interacting vs. simply adding connections. I also care more what my Facebook crew is up to.

    Most people I interview (in my job) feel Facebook has more social value- and let's not underestimate the value of "social" in a social (even a professionally based social) network.

    My day to day on LinkedIn has more to do with accepting and reviewing requests to connect. But there are a lot of people in the world, and theoretically, that network activity could go on for a very long time...

    I think we will see it even out- LinkedIn at 30-40 Million users end of year, and then 2 years from now, both networks at about the same size (say each at about 100 Million).

    I also imagine LinkedIn will eventually replace the resume... it has for me.

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