Editor’s note: This article was first published in December 2011. All figures are from that month, including LinkedIn with 120 million users and Viadeo with just over 40 million. The central prediction did not come true: LinkedIn kept its lead, while Viadeo went into receivership in 2016 and was taken over by the Le Figaro group.
LinkedIn is currently the largest professional network in the world, with 120 million users, but Viadeo is closing in dangerously: a professional network with a clear market strategy and such strong growth that it may well end up knocking LinkedIn off its leading position.
Viadeo is growing thanks to its expansion into emerging countries such as China, India and Brazil, where it buys up the country’s leading professional networks and adds their registered users to its own database. The network currently has just over 40 million users and is growing by around 400,000 new users a month. Now, on top of acquiring Apna Circle (the leading professional network in India) and Unyk (the leading professional network in Brazil), it has taken control of Tianji, the Chinese professional network, which gives it 8 million users there, compared with LinkedIn’s one million in that country.
In the Chinese market alone, Viadeo expects to sign up more than a million new users a month, so Tianji is set to grow from 30 employees to 150 in 2012.
Viadeo’s advantage in China is that it won’t face the censorship problems that Google and Facebook have run into: because these networks are purely professional, they don’t usually have trouble of any kind there. Quite the opposite, they’re seen as an excellent work tool.
Viadeo’s strategy will be to use the profits from the emerging markets where it currently operates to conquer Europe. Once it has gained ground in Europe, its growth could be unstoppable.
Without a doubt, LinkedIn faces a serious threat to its survival as the leading professional network, because Viadeo has a clear strategy, the capital it needs from investors and a solid track record, and it may soon go public. In other words, Viadeo wants to, knows how to and can.
Featured image: Copyleft, CC BY 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
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