LinkedIn started up in 2002, even before the launch of Facebook, as a way for people to make business connections. While the service has certainly grown more slowly than Facebook, LinkedIn has become the main social network devoted to business, as people post and update their resumes and current career status, along with recommendations from others and more.
Today, LinkedIn announced that it now has 200 million active users. It reached the 100 million milestone in March 2011, which means that LinkedIn"s growth has increased drastically in the past couple of years. However, it hasn"t been without some growing pains. In June of 2012, the company admitted that passwords that could access millions of the service"s accounts had been lifted by hackers on one of its servers.
LinkedIn has since pledged to improve its security issues and it appears that the cyber attack has done little to deter new members from joining. As you can see in the infographic below, 74 million of LinkedIn users come from the US, with another 11 million based in the UK. The company claims that two new members a second join the service.
It"s not a shock to learn that the industry that is most represented by LinkedIn is the Information Technology and Services Industry. Four million users identify themselves as being part of that industry, with another 2.03 million in financial services and 1.95 million in higher education.
Source: LinkedIn | Image via LinkedIn