LinkedIn hits 100M users worldwide

Computerworld - LinkedIn hit a major milestone this week when its membership rolls passed the hundred million mark.

The popular social network for professionals and job seekers announced on Tuesday that it now has more than 100 million members worldwide. More than half of those members -- 56 million -- come from outside the United States.

Who are these LinkedIn professionals?

According to the LinkedIn Web site, there are 997,000 teachers, 1,030 chocolatiers, 74 Elvis tribute artists and 1 martini whisperer who have joined the network.

Nine percent of LinkedIn members are in the high-tech community.

"We're now growing at roughly one million new LinkedIn members every week, the equivalent of a professional joining the site at faster than one per second," wrote Jeff Weiner, LinkedIn CEO, in a blog post. "We're also rapidly growing our network globally. Our site is currently used in over 200 countries and territories around the world. You can now connect just as readily with someone in Sao Paulo or Singapore as you can with your colleagues in San Francisco, London or New York."

Hitting the 100 million member milestone is the latest move in an interesting year for the social network.

For instance, earlier this year LinkedIn filed papers with the Securities and Exchange Commission for an initial public offering.

Despite its role as a second-tier player in a social networking world that includes far more widely-used Facebook and Twitter, LinkedIn may be the first one out of the IPO starting gate.

For now, LinkedIn is celebrating its 100 million members. And they're doing it with some interesting stats about the site and its members.

A full 100% of Fortune 500 companies have executives on LinkedIn. Ebay, Amazon.com and Cisco are among the most represented companies.

The membership rolls from Brazil are growing at a year-over-year rate of 428%, while Mexico has a growth rate of 178% and India has a rate of 76%.

Sharon Gaudin covers the Internet and Web 2.0, emerging technologies, and desktop and laptop chips for Computerworld. Follow Sharon on Twitter at @sgaudin, or subscribe to Sharon's RSS feed . Her e-mail address is sgaudin@computerworld.com.

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