Three weeks ago, LinkedIn accomplished a rather large milestone for the network. On April 18, an announcement was made stating that…

LinkedIn has reached just over 300 million users across the world!

LinkedIn is now considered to be the fourth largest country in the world (by population, not literally). The interesting side of this announcement is that two-thirds of the users are not based in the U.S. That leaves only 100 million of users who are located within the country. 300 million is an extremely big accomplishment considering there are approximately 3.3 billion people in the current global workforce.

LinkedIn Social Goals

LinkedIn has come a very long way from their origin. Their new strategy involves helping professional members reach their goals by changing the way they connect on this network. Through influencer posts, leading professionals, publishing platforms, and a very large network, LinkedIn will bring like-minded individuals together and help them improve their skills, opportunities, and overall knowledge. Even with their hands seemingly full, LinkedIn has so much they want to accomplish. One of those goals is to dive deeper into the mobile market seeing as 50% of their global traffic now comes from mobile. It’s pretty clear where the audience is and where LinkedIn needs to be.

Progress over time

LinkedIn’s success didn’t come overnight. It took them approximately 5 years to become the largest professional networking site in the world. However, they’ve become an integral part of every professional looking for employment today. I’ve personally used LinkedIn to find the last 2 positions I’ve held in my career. Better yet, the premium features that LinkedIn offers are truly valuable. They provide a lot of information related to insights, salaries, personal performance analytics and much more. Before the huge accumulation of users, LinkedIn was disproportionately split between men and women. 61% of users were male, leaving only 39% of female. Today, that number has come closer to equilibrium with women consisting of 44% of the population while men consisted of 56%. That’s a huge step in the right direction as LinkedIn aims at getting closer to an equal 50/50 divide.

The future of mobile

With 50% of global traffic coming from mobile, LinkedIn will focus a large portion of their efforts ensuring connectivity on mobile devices spanning from smartphones to tablets, and maybe even wearables in the near future. LinkedIn currently has 5 apps: Pulse, Contacts, Recruiter Mobile, Slideshare, and LinkedIn for smartphone and Ipad. With all the momentum LinkedIn is gaining, there’s no doubt in my mind that they will do great things in terms of professional networking. They went from being the largest network for Tech, Marketing, and Finance industries to now having leverage over many more sectors including Educational Management, Construction, Accounting and even Health Care.

Users outside of the U.S.

Making a full circle, I want to touch base on the 300 million users. We mentioned how one-third of them were based in the U.S., but where is the rest of the network coming from? This is an important question considering the population makes up such a large portion of total users on LinkedIn. During its stages of infancy, LinkedIn’s primary users came from the U.S., Great Britain, India, Canada, and the Netherlands. Today, the most exponential growth comes from Brazil who had no place in the top slots five years ago but holds 3rd place as of 2014. The growth in Great Britain declined making them lose their second place spot as they were replaced by India. LinkedIn has also mentioned they are in the works of increasing the user base in China, so it’s going to be interesting to see that entire demographic experience massive growth.

Where do you see LinkedIn headed and how does it currently impact your life both personally and professionally? Let us know by leaving a comment or tweeting us at @BoxlessMedia.