LinkedIn reaches the 500 million users milestone

LinkedIn is Microsoft's professional social networking website. It has announced that it had passed a major milestone, with over 500 million users registered to its platform.

While the number of users can't be compared with the growth of Facebook, LinkedIn is still enjoying a steady growth. Going back to recent times, it only had 400 million members in October 2015. And in August 2016, it had 450 million members.

The news came as Microsoft debuts its updated sales software, which integrates some of LinkedIn's data.

"This community represents 10+ million active jobs, access to 9+ million companies, and with more than 100,000 articles published every week it’s helping you stay informed on the news and views impacting your professional world,” according to LinkedIn’s blog post announcing the latest user total. “A professional community of this size has never existed until now."
LinkedIn - Microsoft

LinkedIn has proven that time has made it mature enough to be be strongest social and professional networks on the internet. Its strong growth is also resulted from a stronger engagement.

However, LinkedIn has ceased to report its earnings since the company has been acquired by Microsoft. But according to data, 25-50 percent of LinkedIn users are visiting the site on a monthly basis. More than 50 percent of users aren't logging in for more than two months at a time.

Alongside the announcement, Microsoft also gave some insights on how all of those users break down in terms of cities and industries. For example, users in the United Arab Emirates are LinkedIn's most connected people with an average of 211 connections per user; London is the most connected place; staffing and recruiting are the most connected industries, averaging 702 connections per person, followed by venture capital and private equity.