LinkedIn Continues to Add European Users

LinkedIn saw a slight rise in EU users in the second half of last year, while there was also an increase in scam and fake profiles reported by users in the app, according to its latest EU disclosure report.

Under the EU Digital Services Act (DSA), all designated large online platforms need to provide insight into their usage and moderation efforts in the region every six months.

LinkedIn published its latest report earlier this week, giving us some additional notes on overall usage and enforcement, which provide more actual data than LinkedIn’s own limited performance reporting.

First off, on active users. In the second half of 2024, LinkedIn reports that it had 52m logged in monthly active users, and 142m logged out visits.

That’s a slight increase on the 51.9m LinkedIn reported back in October, though LinkedIn also reported a 4 million user increase in its previous report, and a 2.7 million user rise in the report before that.

So over time, LinkedIn is adding more active users in the region, though it did slow in the last six months of the year.

What’s also valuable about these figures is that it gives us an actual view of LinkedIn’s active user counts, as opposed to total members, which it prefers to report.

As you can see, LinkedIn is currently touting the fact that it has over a billion total members, but “members” (i.e. people who’ve signed up for an account), and “active users” are very different things, particularly from an advertiser perspective.

As such, what’s more valuable to know is how many of these “members” are actually using the app every day or month.

Again, LinkedIn doesn’t share this, but based on its reported EU member count (184m) and its active user data reported as part of the DSA obligations (52m), we do know that only 28% of LinkedIn’s audience in Europe would be counted as “active” users”.

If that holds for other regions, then LinkedIn’s monthly active user count is more like 280 million, as opposed to its billion-member headline figure.

Maybe the U.S. sees more usage, and maybe it’s more like 300 million total MAU. But comparatively, LinkedIn’s active engaged audience is much closer to that of Reddit (189m MAU) than the bigger platforms like Instagram (1b), or even X (570m) and Pinterest (553m).

Worth noting in your assessment.

In terms of spam and fake accounts, LinkedIn has also seen a rise since its last report, with an 11k jump in spam reports from users, and a 13k increase in fake profiles reported.

These didn’t, however, result in a significant jump in enforcement for each, so in relative terms, the overall impact was minor on investigation. But the increased attention on LinkedIn is also going to inevitably bump up spam activity, and that’s another element to watch in these reports.

Worth noting, too, that LinkedIn saw a decrease in spam reports via its auto-detection and enforcement process in the period.  

LinkedIn’s DSA disclosures provide some interesting insight into the platform’s growth and activity, along with key notes on actual usage versus overall sign-ups.

And that could help you make more informed choices about your LinkedIn outreach.

You can read LinkedIn’s latest DSA disclosure report here.