• by Laurie Sullivan , Staff Writer @lauriesullivan, July 28, 2021

LinkedIn’s revenue rose 27% to surpass $10 billion for the first time this past fiscal year, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said during an earnings call Tuesday.

The company’s advertising business surpassed $1 billion in revenue in Q2 2021 for the first time -- up 97% year-over-year, growing three times faster than the category.

The company announced the uptick as part of Microsoft's annual revenue and fourth-quarter fiscal earnings report.

In the past five years since Microsoft acquired LinkedIn, revenue nearly tripled, and growth has accelerated.

On a conference call with analysts, Nadella called LinkedIn “a testament to how mission critical the platform has become to help people connect, learn, grow and get hired over the course of their careers.”

The Microsoft division now has 774 million members. Sessions rose 30% in the quarter compared with a year ago.  “Sessions” track each time members use LinkedIn more than 30 minutes after their last activity. For example, it’s measuring how often members come back orstaying on LinkedIn in 30 minute intervals. The surge in video propelled LinkedIn's revenue, in part, to excel. 

"We’ve helped more than 42 million people build the skills they need for the jobs of the future through our global skills initiative with Microsoft," Ryan Roslansky, LinkedIn CEO, wrote in a post on Wednesday. "We’re also enabling the 58M companies on LinkedIn to connect with their customers and employees virtually as effectively as they did face to face."

He also wrote about several features launched in the past year, such as Pronouns and new job titles for parents, as well as products to adapt to a virtual professional world, such as video messaging, Creator Mode, and Cover Story.