10 Fast Facts About LinkedIn

If you want to know more than you thought possible about LinkedIn, you should read its 132-page prospectus with the SEC. But who would want to troll through all that data?

Luckily, we have some nerds who love to do just that. We sliced some of the more interesting stats found within the professional networking site’s filing for an IPO and serve them to you in bite-sized nuggets.

• Million Added Every Two Weeks. During the second half of 2010, LinkedIn’s membership base grew, on average, by 1 million new members every ten days.

• Metrics Rising. Registered users grew from 55 million at the end of 2009 to 90 million at the end of 2010. Page views grew from 2.8 billion to 5.5 billion.

• Global Growth. By the end of 2010, 50% of members were located outside the U.S. LinkedIn’s international headquarters are located in Dublin, Ireland and they have offices in Canada, India, Australia, the Netherlands and the U.K. (For more on LinkedIn user demographics see this SlideShare presentation.)

• Worth A Fortune. LinkedIn’s membership includes executives from every company listed on the 2010 Fortune 500.

• Sales And Spending. LinkedIn is spending heavily on sales and marketing, and expects that to be it’s number one expense going forward in the near-term. Sales and marketing expenses grew by 118% in the first nine months of 2010. Headcount in that area grew by 179%.

• Hiring Heights. Hiring solutions is the company’s top revenue-earner. For the first nine months of the year, LinkedIn’s net revenue increased 100% to $80.6 million. Hiring solutions – which includes its recruiting services, job posting services and several subscriptions services – represented 41% of net revenue.

• Well Spread. No single customer has represented more than 5% of revenue for LinkedIn for the past three years.

• Who’s Getting Paid. Co-Founder and big-time angel investor Reid Hoffman is the largest shareholder in the company with 21.4% percent of shares held. Other large shareholders include Sequoia Capital (18.9%), Greylock Partners (15.8%) and Bressemer Venture Partners (5.1%). Current CEO, Jeffrey Weiner, owns 4.1% of the company.

• Crowd of Competitors. Along with the usual suspects such as Google, Facebook and Twitter, as well as Xing in Germany and Viadeo in France, LinkedIn considers CRM-provider Salesforce.com a competitor because of that company’s launch of Chatter and purchase of Jigsaw. Monster and CareerBuilder are other obvious competitors its lists.

• Worried Workplaces. LinkedIn is concerned your employer might block access to the site or implement stringent policies about what you can and can’t post. That would mean less than up-to-date data. From the companies listed “risk factors”: “Enterprises or professional organizations, including governmental agencies, could block access to our website or the Internet generally…or they may adopt policies that prohibit listing the employers’ names on the employees’ LinkedIn profiles in order to minimize the risk that employees will be contacted and hired by other employers. These entities block or limit access to our website or adopt policies restricting our members from providing us with accurate and up-to-date information.”

These facts show where LinkedIn has been and a lot about its prospects for the future. How do you think LinkedIn will fare on the international stage and in the public markets?