LinkedIn Learns Spanish

Spanish is everywhere; there may be around 360 million native speakers worldwide, and even little children in Lexington, Kentucky are being taught it in school.  So LinkedIn is leaping at a big opportunity by making its site available in Spanish.

Dan Nye, LinkedIn’s CEO, had a statement translated into the widespread language and posted on the LinkedIn Blog.  Rendered back into English by Google Translate, it thanked existing users, welcomed new ones, and referenced the site’s membership count of 25 million people.

 Dan Nye

Nye didn’t get into any fresh monetization possibilities, but a LinkedIn spokesperson was kind enough to discuss that matter.  "Regarding advertising, our focus, first and foremost, is making sure our Spanish-language usage experience is an extremely valuable one for our users," she began in an email to WebProNews.

She then continued, "That said, over the next few months we’ll be exploring options for helping marketers connect with Spanish-speaking buyers on LinkedIn."  It looks like the introduction of more languages – and then potentially more advertising options – is on LinkedIn’s "to do" list, as well.

This development could mark the beginning of a big expansion.  A look at Wikipedia’s entry on the world’s richest people makes that seem like a good idea.