LinkedIn pushes to dominate mainland Europe

LinkedIn is pushing to increase its market share in mainland Europe with the opening of an office in the Netherlands.

The Amsterdam base is a second European HQ for the professional-focused social network, following on from a London office which opened in 2008.

With a reported 55 million professionals using LinkedIn, the company’s Country Manager there, Eugenie van Wiechen, claims in a blog post that the member base in the Netherlands is “one of the most active and highly engaged groups with the highest number of LinkedIn members per capita outside of the U.S”.

The Amsterdam team’s initial focus is to establish local partnerships and “ramp up our general operations” whatever that may mean.

While LinkedIn has established itself as the default social network for contact-building, job hunting and CV-pimping in much of the English-speaking world, it still has a way to go to become dominant everywhere. As TechCrunch Europe notes, “The company is doing well in Europe, although it has proved tough for them to convince members of established European players such as Xing (particularly in Germany) and Viadeo (particularly in France) to make the switch.”