LinkedIn, the popular online social networking service for business professionals, announced Monday it plans to open an office in Toronto as part of an international expansion plan that has seen the U.S. Internet company set up shop in Australia, Ireland, The Netherlands, India and the United Kingdom.
In moving to establish a footprint in Canada in the next few months, LinkedIn plans to hire a full team, including a Canadian country manager who will help oversee the company's ambitions to increase its user base, grow its advertising business and further its subscription and recruiting businesses here.
Launched in 2003, LinkedIn's user base has grown to more than 60 million professionals in more than 200 countries, with more than half its membership now outside the United States, the company said last month.
To land a job at LinkedIn Canada, applicants will probably need to have a profile on LinkedIn itself. That's because, like other Canadian companies including Research In Motion Ltd. and Royal Bank of Canada, LinkedIn plans to use its own user base as a means of finding someone to fill the country manager's role.
As a testament to Canadians' love for social media -- we were among the fastest adopters of Facebook outside the United States -- LinkedIn's user base in this country now exceeds two million accounts, the company says.
"[Canada's] not only one of the fastest-growing markets, but it's also one of the most-engaged markets for us around the world," said Arvind Rajan, vice-president of international for LinkedIn.
"In fact, engagement levels in Canada are higher for us than even levels in the U.S., which is not a typical. A lot of Internet companies find that their Canadian membership is the most active of any region."
LinkedIn began as an online rolodex for professionals primarily in the technology industry, but the service has evolved to become an important component of millions of online resumes from all sectors and a prime drawing pool of talent for thousands of businesses.
Mr. Rajan said that LinkedIn realized that to be successful in Canada, the company needed a Canadian presence.
"You can't do that from here in the United States because the market is different in Canada, it's unique," he said in a telephone interview from the company's Mountain View, Calif. head office.
"We want to be able to speak to our members in Canada in a unique way, through a Canadian team, which is why we're taking the approach of opening an office there. That's the reason why we've done the same thing in other markets around the world. There's only so much that one can do from a central location without being closer to our customers, understanding their needs and developing solutions that make sense for them."
Unlike other social networking services that have struggled to define business plans despite user bases numbering in the millions -- for example, Twitter -- LinkedIn has been profitable since 2007 thanks to its three-pronged revenue-generating strategy, which includes display advertising, subscription services and recruitment tools for potential employers.
As the economic downturn took hold, LinkedIn found its user base exploding as thousands laid off workers turned to the website to tap their personal networks for any job lead they could find.
"What's been great has been that that led to a boost in week-over-week membership growth, but that rate has continued," Mr. Rajan said. "It has continued to accelerate around the world. That part wasn't that surprising. In times of economic uncertainty, it causes people to think about their career, and it's led to people using LinkedIn more and more. However, what's also been true for the last year has been that all of our revenue lines have grown aggressively and it has proven the robustness of our business model."
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