Business professionals may have finally realized that social networking isn’t just for the young and angsty. The latest metrics on social network growth reveal some impressive figures for business-oriented networking site LinkedIn, which more than quadrupled its number of unique users since last March.
Obtained by TVWeek, the figures from Nielsen Online unsurprisingly place MySpace and Facebook in the top two spots, although Facebook nearly doubled its users since this time last year, while MySpace grew by just 8 percent.
It’s unlikely that LinkedIn — targeting a specific audience — will ever grow large enough to challenge the huge user base of the more general social networking sites, but it’s certainly seen pretty incredible growth within its niche. Facebook already opened up for mass registration, but do you think the company will add some business-friendly features to Facebook to funnel professionals away from LinkedIn’s growing user base?
| Site | Unique AudienceMarch ‘08 | Unique AudienceMarch ‘07 | % change |
| MySpace.com | 60,398,000 | 55,937,000 | 8% |
| 24,940,000 | 12,622,000 | 98% | |
| Classmates Online | 13,599,000 | 12,991,000 | 5% |
| 7,877,000 | 1,878,000 | 319% | |
| Windows Live Spaces | 7,852,000 | 9,076,000 | -13% |
| Reunion.com | 5,940,000 | 5,217,000 | 14% |
| AOL Hometown | 5,785,000 | 9,246,000 | -37% |
| Club Penguin | 4,623,000 | 3,482,000 | 33% |
| AOL Community | 3,229,000 | 4,640,000 | -30% |
| Buzznet.com | 2,717,000 | 1,822,000 | 49% |
