LInkedIn stormer frem

LinkedIn er – i al ubemærkethed, ihvertfald for mig – vokset kraftigt det sidste år. Faktisk var der 30 procent flere voksne danskere der brugte LinkedIn i oktober ’10 sammenholdt med samme måned sidste år. Og for at det ikke skal være løgn steg den gennemsnintlige brugers tidsforbrug med 50 procent i samme periode. Det viser tal gemt i GemiusAudience.

Nu 350.000 aktive brugere
I absolutte tal er LinkedIn i perioden gået frem fra 270.000 til 350.000 aktive brugere, og en vækst i gennemsnitligt tidsforbrug fra 20 minutter og 46 sekunder til 30 minutter og 36 sekunder.

Stadig dværg i forhold til Facebook – men en fagligt fokuseret dværg
LinkedIn er stadig langt bagud for Facebook hvis 2.628.000 voksne danske brugere hver lægger 8 timer, 40 minutter og 58 sekunder på en måned. Men LinkedIn er til gengæld så meget mere fokuseret. Du kan være ret sikker på at LinkedIn-tiden bruges fagligt – og på at langt det meste af Facebook-tiden bruges på en langt mere generel social netværksaktivitet.

Vækst skyldes Facebook-opdragelse – og -træthed, tror jeg
Hvad er der sket? To ting tror jeg: for det første en generel Facebook-effekt. Facebook har lært os alle at bruge sociale netværk. Og givet en sult efter mere fagligt indhold også.

Ikke at Facebook har tabt brugere i perioden. Det har de ikke, de er vokset fra 2448.432 – altså med ca. 80.000 brugere. Til gengæld har den gennemsnintlige bruger tabt 35 minutter om måneden: fra 9:15 til 8:40. Er det dem LinkedIn har ædt de 10 minutter af?

…og LinkedIn Groups
For det andet er LinkedIn gradvist blevet mere og mere Facebookagtig i sine funktioner. Her springer særligt LinkedIn Groups i øjnene. De blev først lanceret for lidt over to år siden. Men i løbet af perioden fra okt. ’09 til ’10 er de blevet opgraderet i hvertfald to gange (læs her og her). Og helt personligt har jeg oplevet en kraftig vækst i min LinkedIn gruppe brug siden sommeren 2009.

Lidt kuriøst har jeg også oplevet flere reaktioner på mine tweets fra folk jeg kender som har set dem – ikke på Twitter, men på LinkedIn, hvor de automatisk fødes over som status-updates. Også et tegn på at LinkedIn faktisk bruges.

Facebook rules Danish social networking

Social networking in Denmark comes down to Facebook vs. the rest. Twitter, LinkedIn, Myspace and Danish Arto are hugely surpassed by the gigantic volume of Facebook. From January 2009 onwards, Facebbok has captured some 2,4 million adults out of less than four million total internetusers. Number two, Myspace, reached 315.000 adults in October, Linkedin 270.000, Twitter almost 170.000 and Arto less than 90.000. This is one of the main conclusions from a new analysis I’ve just published, “Danish social networking in numbers: facebook vs the rest”.

Facebook, Mr and Mrs Smith, the young ones and the Eastenders

Facebook is a smashing hit. All the way through 2009 they’ve managed to keep on to an astronomic number of users – and apparently people keep spending more and more time on the site – in October Facebook took out 16 minutes of the average user a day. Not even the youngest seems to be loosing interest (as opposed to the may-be US-situation reported by Adweek).

However the different sites has a take on different types of users. Everybody is on facebook, giving it a rather “mr and mrs Smith”-like profile. LinkedIn users are well-educated professionals. Myspace and – particularly – Arto have a good grib of the young ones, while users from Eastern Denmark are overrepresented on Twitter.

Women’s winning game

I also find a significant difference when it comes to social networking and women. Even though the number of female users only is only slightly larger than the number of male users, women spend up to dobule the number of minutes on their social networking activities on Facebook – on Twitter it’s four times as much! If the ability to navigate in social networking is only slightly as important as the hype goes, this makes social networking a winning game for women. (More on this in this previous post: War of the gender reborn on the internet: Women socialize, men gather information)

Twitter reached saturation

While Facebook is extremly stable, twitter.com seems to have reached saturation in terms of the number of users. Twitter first breaks through the lower threshold of the publicly available audience measurement in April 2009 with 120.000 users. It kept growing up until peaking in June 2009 thereafter stabilizing, reaching 168.000 adults Danes in October. Compared to Facebook, keep in mind Twitter is different, more like a spreading-the-word type of service as opposed to the closer and cosier “Baking with the kids” kind of Facebook-updates. (More on this in this post: Danish facts: Twitter is a small, elitist niche-site)

Download full report

Send, download and print. Price: 345 ddk/€45,50 (ex. VAT)

“Danish social networking in numbers: facebook vs the rest” is in 15 pages and includes 6 illustrations.

To order the report, send an email to info@mediawatch.dk including your contact information with subject: “Buy Facebook”, and you’ll receice both report as pdf-file and the invoice.

Linkedin flourishes in the shadow of Facebook

When Facebook arrived, I thought: well this one surely leaves sites likes Linkedin behind. My friendlist at facebook grew with the speed of light – contrasted to my connections at Linkedin, which increased significantly slower. A shame for Linkedin, I thought, they had it all, were there four years ahead in time, but somehow blew it. They didn’t hit it right, they didn’t find the secret magic-button that Facebook somehow stumbled upon. And now they’ve been run over, I thought.

But Linkedin was not left behind. Partly because they catched up with Facebook functionality – but primarily I think because Facebook taught a lot of people what social networks are about. And apparently triggered their taste for the phenomenon: lets have some more of those! During the past half year, my Linkedin network has grown significantly, and with great pace. My Linkedin-network has flourished in the shadow of Facebook.