10 Essential Market Research Methods
By Joshua BoydOct 24
Marketing
Published July 2nd 2018
35 Insightful and Valuable LinkedIn Statistics
Our LinkedIn statistics below will take you through the company’s formation all the way up to and past Microsoft’s acquisition of the social media platform. Get to know LinkedIn better.
LinkedIn history facts
- LinkedIn was founded on December 28th 2002 and launched on May 5th 2003
- It was founded by Reid Hoffman, Allen Blue, Jean-Luc Vaillan, Eric Ly, and Konstantin Guericke
- In November 2003 LinkedIn received investment from Sequoia Capital
- The site saw a slow start with just 6,000 sign ups in the first month
- After the first six months, this had grown to 37k
- In early 2005, LinkedIn launched LinkedIn Jobs, their first attempt to make money from the site
- 2006 sees the company make a profit for the first time
- The company went public in May 2011 with the first share traded at $45
- In June 2016 it was announced that Microsoft would be buying LinkedIn for $26.2bn, or $196 per share, their most expensive acquisition to date
- LinkedIn contributed $2.3bn in revenue for Microsoft in 2017
- By this point LinkedIn had over 450m users, with it now currently sitting at 562m
- Jeff Weiner is the current CEO of LinkedIn
LinkedIn demographics and user statistics
- 25% of all US adults are on LinkedIn
- 44% of users are women
- The platform attracts people with higher paying jobs, with 45% of people earning over $75k saying they use LinkedIn compared to just 13% of those earning under $30k.
- There are 46m students and recent college graduates on LinkedIn
- More than 70% of members are outside of the US
- Two thirds of millionaires use LinkedIn
LinkedIn’s notable acquisitions
| Company Acquired | Date | Cost |
|---|---|---|
| Slideshare | May 3 2012 | $199m |
| Pulse | April 11 2014 | $90m |
| Bright.com | Feb 6 2014 | $120m |
| Lynda.com | April 9 2015 | $1.5bn |
LinkedIn usage statistics
- 106 million people access the site on a monthly basis
- More than 1 million members have published content on LinkedIn’s Pulse platform
- The average CEO has 930 LinkedIn connections
- 57% of traffic comes from mobile
- Only 17% of US small businesses use LinkedIn
- As of July 2 2018 there are 24.5m company pages on the platform
LinkedIn marketing statistics
- LinkedIn gets revenue from 4 areas of its business: Talent Solutions (recruitment), Marketing Solutions (ads), Premium Subscriptions, and Learning Solutions (training)
- In 2015, before the platform was acquired by Microsoft, LinkedIn saw ad revenue hit $581m
- The most represented industry on LinkedIn is Information and Technology Services
- 75% of people who have recently changed jobs used LinkedIn to help them decide
- The site hosts 10m active job postings
- LinkedIn generated $1.3bn in revenue in Q2 2018 alone
- 64% of social referrals to corporate websites come from LinkedIn
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