LinkedIn hits two million – Infographic places Australia in that mix

In January this year LinkedIn reached 200 million active users globally, demonstrating that professional social networking is beginning to be recognised as being valuable alongside personal social networking.

I’ve just been sent their ‘early adopter’ infographic, which unlike the infographic on LinkedIn’s blog (which gives great demographic breakdowns by profession), provides a view on the country breakdown of usage. This places Australia as growing, but still with significantly less take-up than the US, UK or Canada.

By the numbers, using population, roughly 13.5% of Australians actively use LinkedIn, compared to 23.6% of US citizens, 20.5% of Canadians and 17.7% British.

I put this down to Australia’s conservative workplace culture.

We may be innovative and tech-savvy as individuals, but in the corporate, public and NGO sectors our workplaces lag on many international indicators for innovation and technology adoption compared to other nations in the OECD and western world.

Of course this is changing as social media becomes normalised in workplaces and the initial fear, uncertainty and doubt bred by ignorance is replaced by more confident and managed approaches – so I expect there to be plenty of upside growth for professional social networking in Australia in the next ten years.

This is something government agencies and companies need to keep in mind when looking at how they reach professional stakeholders and working citizens.