We’re growing at roughly one million new LinkedIn members every week – that’s more than one new professional joining the network every second !
Here is some more info if you are interested -
While there is no doubt LinkedIn is hugely successful, the fact remains that it is only 1/5th or 1/6th size of that famous social network called Facebook. I know that LinkedIn is mainly targeted towards professionals but what strikes me is that amount of time a user spend on LinkedIn may not even compare with that on Facebook. In other words, LinkedIn is missing the stickiness that you would expect from these social sites that makes users visit them over and over again.
Curious to find out, what is missing I did a quick round of LinkedIn. I see that it has features like Groups, Company News and LinkedIn Answers. I would imagine they have right featureset for what they are meant for. Also it has basic app marketplace. But where are the apps that would be of interest to me? Take something like Hiring. Hiring is a very social activity since a lot of positions are filled based on networking and trust. Where is an app that for that? I do not see it. May be there is something like it available if you pay for a premium membership. But my point is that I believe apps like these would be of immense help to all the users.
One final point, now that LinkedIn had a very successful IPO. The stock doubled right after the opening. This buying frenzy ended up making the company valuation to be around $10B. If you do the calculation, that means every user is valued $100. Compare that to Microsoft's Skype acquisition which valued each user to be worth roughly around $13. I am not a stock expert nor I claim to be one. So rather than pondering over why is that the case, at least let's enjoy our moment of glory as one of the 100 million LinkedIn users !
