LinkedIn now boasts more users than Twitter and Snapchat combined

LinkedIn, the business-orientated social network now owned by Microsoft, has hit the 500-million user landmark.

“We recently crossed an important and exciting milestone,” the company teases in its blog.

“We now have half a billion members in 200 countries connecting, and engaging with one another in professional conversations and finding opportunities through these connections on LinkedIn.”

While much of the remaining post explains why you should be using LinkedIn, the company also sheds some light on who uses its service.

Who uses LinkedIn for what?

London, Amsterdam and San Francisco are the three most “connected places” using the service, while the United Arab Emirates, the Netherlands and Singapore boast the most connected people.

And as for most connected industries and positions, “staffing and recruiting” and “human resources” take the top step of both respectively.

LinkedIn boasts a larger user pool than Twitter and Snapchat combined, but is dwarfed by Instagram and Facebook

Overall though, the new “half a billion” figure is a key milestone for the company now under the wing of Redmond.

Although growth is slowing (the company added around 80-million users in Q3 2016 than Q3 2015), around 33-million users still adopted LinkedIn since October 2016.

The war of user numbers

That 500-million number also places it among the world’s most commonly used social networks, including Facebook (1.8-billion), YouTube (“more than a billion“) and Instagram (600-million), and above the likes of Twitter (313-million) and Snapchat (158-million).

The increased user base could help the company to break its total quarterly revenue figure into the billions, having achieved US$960-million in Q3 2016. That’ll go a long way to repaying some of Microsoft’s US$26-billion it spent on the social network in December 2016.

The user announcement also comes after a number of UI tweaks hit the social network.

Earlier this month the company tweaked its messaging system, adding a persistent, cross-site messaging system similar to Facebook Messenger. It also added photo editing, “Trending Storylines” and comment moderation features for longform published to its platform.

In January, the company also announced its new LinkedIn Desktop design.

“The impact of half a billion professionals connecting and communicating is very real, and very accessible to anyone who wants to take part today,” the company adds.