As more people look forward to work amid the COVID-19 pandemic, LinkedIn has seen increased usage, as the parent company Microsoft reporting that the professional social network saw ‘record levels of engagement’ – up 31% – in the most recent quarter.

There are findings that are listed in Microsoft’s FY21 Q1 report, the company published this week, along with outlining its key performance highlights in the period.

According to the screenshot, LinkedIn revenue is also on the rise, up 16%, driven mostly by increased ad spend.

In light of the LinkedIn engagement matter, Microsoft says: “Advertiser demand on LinkedIn returned to near pre-COVID levels, up 40% year over year, as marketers use our tools to connect with professionals ready to do business. And organizations continue to tap into the combination of LinkedIn Sales Navigator and Dynamics 365 to ensure salespeople have the context they need to sell remotely.”

Moreover, back in July, LinkedIn cut a percentage of 6% of its global workforce- of around 960 roles, in its Global Sales and Talent Acquisition organizations because of the downturn in activity due to the pandemic.

Furthermore, LinkedIn explained at the time that with fewer companies able to hire at the same volume that they had in the past, additionally, the demand was not enough to sustain regular operations in this element.

LinkedIn Engagement in 2020

Talking more about LinkedIn engagement, that move was mainly focused n Talent Solutions because of the slowdown in hiring, therefore LinkedIn may well have made the right call when it was reducing its staff. However, these figures suggest that it might have overestimated the impact on ad sales, along with more businesses looking for new ways to keep sales during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Not only that but also, Microsoft has reported that LinkedIn is now up to 722 million members worldwide, up from the 675 million it reported in January this year. Of course, it is worth clarifying that “members” and “active users” are not the same thing. LinkedIn doesn’t share monthly or even daily active user counts, and that makes it difficult to gauge the actual comparative usage of the social app.

Talking more about LinkedIn engagement, there are previous estimates which have suggested that LinkedIn’s active user base is generally around half of its total audience, which would put it at around 361 million MAU. Moreover, Microsoft notes that in the period, LinkedIn launched its new redesign, besides adding Stories for (nearly) all users.

However, there are no usage insights on Stories, or even how popular the new feature has been. LinkedIn took its time expanding the launch of the feature, with Brazilian users getting Stories back in June, and this was months ahead of the expanded launch in September.

That suggests that the function wasn’t gaining significant traction in the early test markets, however, maybe it was just expanded testing to make sure everything was in place. More about LinkedIn engagement, Microsoft notes that LinkedIn Learning has also seen a big increase in usage in 2020.