LinkedIn Says Half of Users to Come Via Mobile Devices Next Year
By Mark Milian
Bommberg
Oct 23, 2013 10:42 AM CT
LinkedIn Corp. (LNKD), the professional-networking site with more than 238 million members, expects half its users to access the service from mobile devices next year, up from 38 percent today.
Members who use the mobile site are more than twice as active as those who only visit from personal computers, the Mountain View, California-based company said today in a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. Most users in Turkey, Singapore and the United Arab Emirates already access the service via mobile, the filing said.
Internet companies that derive revenue from advertising are seeing a shift in usage to smartphones that’s changing their businesses. Facebook Inc. (FB) and Google Inc. (GOOG) have shown this year that even with lower ad rates on phones and tablets, the companies can bolster revenue because of the increased popularity of mobile applications and services.
At LinkedIn, mobile viewing accounted for more than half of revenue from an ad product called sponsored updates, where companies can post status messages to users, the filing said.
After resisting the SEC’s demands on disclosures about its mobile and non-U.S. businesses, LinkedIn will start releasing more of that information, according to correspondence made public yesterday. LinkedIn said it had been seeking to “refine” its methodology on reporting mobile unique visitors as a percentage of total unique visitors.
LinkedIn said in August that 33 percent of unique visitors accessed the service from mobile applications in the second quarter, an increase from 21 percent during the same period last year. Jeff Weiner, LinkedIn’s chief executive officer, will hold a news conference in San Francisco later today to discuss mobile usage, said Hani Durzy, a company spokesman.
LinkedIn fell 2.7 percent to $238.94 at 11:14 a.m. in New York. The stock has more than doubled this year and climbed more than fivefold since LinkedIn’s 2011 initial public offering.
To contact the reporter on this story: Mark Milian in San Francisco at mmilian@bloomberg.net
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Pui-Wing Tam at ptam13@bloomberg.net
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