The number of members of the US career networking website LinkedIn has grown to 259 million, the company said on Tuesday.
The growth represents annual membership growth of 38 per cent, LinkedIn said, adding that members used the service at record levels across desktop computers and mobile devices.
LinkedIn is aimed at people who want to make and maintain professional business contacts and look for jobs. Although it is similar to Facebook, it competes more directly with Xing, another professional networking website with more than 13 million members worldwide, more than half of whom are based in German-speaking countries.
LinkedIn is among the successful new internet companies traded on the stock exchange. Since the beginning of the year its stock price has doubled. The company said on Tuesday its revenue in the third quarter grew 56 per cent to $393 million.
The cost of marketing and administration, however, increased and the company also paid higher taxes. Those factors resulted in a loss of $3.4 million for the quarter compared with a profit of $2.3 million in the same period last year.