By Stephen Nellis
(Reuters) - LinkedIn, the business-focused social network owned by Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT), on Wednesday said it now has more than 1 billion members and is adding more artificial intelligence features for paying users.
Crossing the billion-users mark puts LinkedIn - where members maintain a resume-like profile of their education, work experience and professional skills - in the top-tier of social media networks that include rivals such as Meta Platforms (NASDAQ:META).
About 80% of recent members are signing up from outside of the United States, the company has said.
LinkedIn has a free tier of membership but also offers subscriptions. Members of its $39.99-a-month tier will get new AI features that can tell a user, who may be plowing through dozens of job postings, whether they're a good candidate based on the information in their profile.
The system can also recommend profile changes to make the user more competitive for a job.
The tool is designed to help users go "from what used to be just seeing a job and feeling insecure to being able to make tremendous progress in just one session, all the way towards an interaction," Tomer Cohen, LinkedIn's chief product officer, said in an interview.
LinkedIn also introduced on Wednesday a button that will summarize long posts into a few key bullet points tailored for each user, for example by giving a sales professional a different takeaway than a stock broker.
(This story has been corrected to reflect that LinkedIn premium subscriptions start at $39.99 per month, not $30, in paragraph 4)