Indonesia hits 1M LinkedIn users, grows faster than Facebook

Indonesia has the third largest Facebook population of any country on earth, but growth on the social network in the country is being eclipsed by that of LinkedIn.

The professional network announced that it has reached the one-million user mark in the South-East Asian country, just a couple of months after adding support for the country’s official language Bahasa Indonesia.

According to TheNextWeb, LinkedIn has added some 200 00 users in that period, representing a 25% growth.

Stats from Social Bakers meanwhile, suggest that Facebook only grew 5.5% in the same period.

“Since the launch of the local language site,” says LinkedIn, “the number of LinkedIn Groups in Bahasa Indonesia has doubled to over 700 groups”.

“Indonesia is an important market for us where we see a huge potential for growth. Two months after the launch of the local language site, this is a significant milestone for us that demonstrate that professionals in Indonesia are interested in building their online brand on LinkedIn,” said Clifford Rosenberg, Managing Director of LinkedIn Australia, New Zealand and Southeast Asia.

Linked In clearly sees massive growth potential in the Asia-Pacific region, having launched language support for Korean and Malaysian at the same time as it made Bhasa Indonesia available.

Before anyone goes running LinkedIn flags up and down poles all over Indonesia, let’s consider some other numbers:

LinkedIn may be growing faster than Facebook, but the former’s one-million users only represent a fraction of the 43-million plus users the latter can lay claim to in Indonesia. Even the much slower growth of Facebook saw it add over two-million users in the country. That’s double the number of total LinkedIn users.

The numbers are even starker when you consider the relative online penetration of the two networks. LinkedIn’s one-million Indonesian users represent 0.39% of the country’s total population and around three percent of its total online population.

Facebook’s 43-million users, on the other hand, mean that the social network has a total population penetration of 17.72% and an online penetration of 143.53%.

As I’ve already mentioned, Indonesia has the third largest Facebook population on earth. At present it lies in 19th in the LinkedIn stakes.

Given Facebook’s broad appeal it is, of course, natural that it would have more users. It’s not the world’s most popular social network for nothing.

The continuing growth of both social networks suggest that the country is becoming increasingly connected.

Language support aside, LinkedIn’s growth in Indonesia also suggests that business professionals are desperate connect to each other and are willing to embrace technology in their efforts to do so.

The fact that the tech sector is viewed as an important part of the county’s economic growth is evident in the fact that alongside Oil and Energy, Telecommunications and IT and Services make up two of the three largest industry sectors with the fastest growing LinkedIn membership in the country.