Calling Early Adopter No.729281

25th March, 2011

Loved the email I just received from Reid Hoffman, Co-founder and Chairman of LinkedIn.

Mr Hoffman’s email delivered the news that this week LinkedIn signed up it’s 100 millionth member, and:
“I want to personally thank you because you were one of LinkedIn’s first million members (member number 729281 in fact!).”

Two things struck me about this email: 1) It’s a great piece of customer relations, just to say thank you for the support, and 2) What a phenomenom this site is. Even at number 729281, I was in the first 1% of people to use LinkedIn.

There’s a link in the email that leads to a fabulous graphic illustrating just how powerful these 100 million members are. It reminded me of the presentation at the Intersections 2011 by David McCandless (“Information is Beautiful”) at the Eden Project the other week. However, in that case David was warning us to be careful when people (read ‘politicians’) start spouting 100m as a big number. It’s all relative – see the Billion Dollar-o-Gram.

In Reid Hoffman’s case, I think he has absolute right to proclaim big numbers… LinkedIn is currently growing at an amazing rate of 1,000,000 members a week. Jeff Weiner explains in his blog: 100 million members and counting…

Well done LinkedIn, and thank you getting in touch!