Announced earlier today on LinkedIn’s corporate blog by CEO Jeff Weiner, LinkedIn has surpassed 50 million business users worldwide.  LinkedIn’s growth seems to be accelerating by adding roughly 5 million new users in the last 2 months, and the last 1 million users joining in the last 12 days.

About half of LinkedIn’s users are international – which is where the recent surge has come from.  The business-orientated social network has more than 11 million users in Europe and its fastest growing country is now India with almost 3 million users.  Apparently the Netherlands has the highest per capita rate of adoption at 30% of the population (seems unreal).

CEO Jeff Weiner took over from Founder Reid Hoffman in June of this year as Hoffman has turned much of his interest to angel investing.  Is LinkedIn gearing up for a run at the public markets?  Possibly.  The companies last round in 2008 was valued at around $1 billion and its been profitable for over 2 years now.  Very impressive for a somewhat low profile giant in the social media space.  Wondering if LinkedIn will venture into the consumer space – possibly by acquisition?  Time will tell.

Never used the service before?  Check out this brief tutorial courtesy of the company:

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