I put up a bare bones profile on LinkedIn four or five years ago but have not updated it since then. When someone wants to add me to their network I respond, although I have not reached out to anyone. I do use the site to check out new business contacts and have found it very useful. The site is getting a lot of attention from recruiters.
LinkedIn gets revenue boost from tech hiring
Benny Evangelista, Chronicle Staff Writer
Thursday, May 5, 2011
With tech sector employment booming, LinkedIn Corp. on Wednesday reported a first-quarter revenue jump of 110 percent largely fueled by features on the professional social network that helps companies recruit workers.
In a document filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, the Mountain View firm said $101.9 million - nearly half of its revenues last year - were generated by tools that help corporate recruiters scour the network for prospective job candidates.
LinkedIn is a private company but registered with the SEC on Jan. 27 with plans to raise as much as $175 million in an initial public stock offering. Wednesday's update of that filing, submitted the day before the eighth anniversary of the launch of LinkedIn's website, included the company's latest quarterly results, updating the financial snapshot of a firm that has more than 102 million registered members.
The filing also revealed LinkedIn has chosen to go public, using the stock ticker LNKD on the New York Stock Exchange, a decision seen as a major victory for the NYSE over its fiercest rival, the technology-heavy Nasdaq stock market.
In the quarter ending March 31, LinkedIn's net revenue increased to $93.9 million, up from $44.7 million from the same period in 2010. Net income for the period was $2.08 million, up from $1.81 million the year before.
And for the full 2010, LinkedIn posted revenues of $243.1 million and net income of $15.38 million, compared with revenues of $120.1 million and a net loss of $3.97 million in 2009.
The most dramatic increase came from LinkedIn's hiring solutions tools, which include job postings and programs that help recruiters identify job candidates from their member profiles. Last year, hiring solutions became more lucrative than advertising and premium subscriptions, at a time when tech sector jobs - in the Bay Area in particular - are reportedly nearing all-time highs.
For the first quarter this year, hiring solutions generated $46.3 million. And for the year, those revenues generated $101.88 million, a 182 percent increase from $36.1 million in 2009. The number of companies that use those hiring tools rose from 3,900 to 4,800 during the first quarter and now include 73 of the Fortune 100 firms, LinkedIn said.
The filing also said LinkedIn had 101.5 million members worldwide by the end of March, 12 million more than it had at the end of the year.
"While it took us nearly 500 days to reach our first 1 million members, during the second half of 2010, on average, we added more than a million new members every 10 days," the company said in the registration.
E-mail Benny Evangelista at bevangelista@sfchronicle.com.
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