Linkedin with profit and more and more customers
More and more people are using the social network Linkedin for career purposes. This growth is also evident in German-speaking countries, where Linkedin is slowly closing in on its competitor Xing. Sales increased in the advertising business, among other areas.
Over 2014 as a whole, the company still posted a loss of a good 15 million dollars. However, the career network returned to the black in the final quarter with earnings of just under 3.1 million dollars.
The final quarter was also strong in terms of sales and customer growth. The number of users increased by a quarter to 347 million worldwide. Six million of these now come from the POCH region, which comprises Germany, Austria and Switzerland. This represents an increase of 20 percent since May 2014.
Lucrative service business
Linkedin's biggest source of revenue is recruitment solutions. Revenues in this area increased by 41 percent within a year. However, revenue in the advertising business, where users are shown advertisements, also increased by 56 percent. Here, too, the offering in the DACH region was expanded. For example, companies can reach their target groups more precisely with language preference targeting and the personalized page feed.
Competition from Xing and Facebook
Linkedin is the market leader in Switzerland, as DACH Managing Director Till Kaestner explained to SDA. Looking at the entire German-speaking region, however, the German competitor Xin is still ahead with 8.3 million users. Kaestner
also conceded that Linkedin is only just starting out in Germany, Austria and Switzerland and that there is still a lot of catch-up potential.
Facebook at Work
Linkedin is of course also keeping a close eye on developments at Facebook, the world's largest social network. Since mid-January, the company has been testing the Facebook at Work application in selected companies. Users can use the site to discuss with colleagues, work together on documents and also maintain professional contacts.
Experts expect that Facebook could compete with the business of Linkedin or Xing. However, Linkedin DACH boss Kästner was emphatically calm in his comments to SDA. It is still unclear exactly what Facebook is bringing to the market. In addition, Linkedin members have a fundamentally different user behavior than Facebook users. (SDA)
