The Most Popular Stories on LinkedIn in 2011

With the year ending, we wanted to know what stories were the most appealing to more than 130 million professionals on LinkedIn. Here's what we found: there is a massive demand for information on how to be better at work. No surprise there! But the demand is democratic: the top articles featured tips gleaned from professionals across a broad spectrum, whether it was from Steve Jobs or from Ilya Pozin, a digital marketing executive and author of this year's most-shared story. The secret is making the information inspiring, accessible and fun. It also doesn't hurt to use the numbers 5, 7 or 9 in your headline. Here are this year's most-shared stories on LinkedIn:

  1. 9 Things That Motivate Employees More Than Money (Inc.) Nov. 28
  2. Steve Jobs and the Seven Rules of Success (Entrepreneur) Oct. 14
  3. Steve Jobs: How To Live Before You Die (TED Talks) October
  4. The World at Seven Billion (BBC) Oct. 26
  5. Four Destructive Myths Most Companies Still Live By (Harvard Business Review) Nov. 1
  6. 5 Things to Do Every Day for Success (Fast Company) March 1
  7. Tech Firm Implements Employee 'Zero Email' Policy (Yahoo News) Nov. 29
  8. The Org Charts of all the Major Tech Companies (Humor) (Business Insider) June 29
  9. Here's How People Look at Your Facebook Profile -- Literally (Mashable) Nov. 30
  10. 5 Ways To Keep Your Rockstar Employees Happy (GigaOM) Oct. 15

Note: Articles about LinkedIn tend to be overrepresented on the network, so we stripped those out in favor of global articles.

Top 10 Breaking News Stories on LinkedIn in 2011 

  1. LIVE: Osama Bin Laden Dead (BBC) May 2
  2. Breaking: Google Buys Motorola Mobility for $12.5B (Tech Crunch) Aug. 15
  3. Steve Jobs Resigns from Apple (Tech Crunch) Aug. 24
  4. Adobe Kills Mobile Flash (Wired) Nov. 9
  5. Twitter Just Fired a Cannonball at Facebook and Google+ (Business Insider) Dec. 8
  6. Google to Launch Major New Social Network Called Circles (Read Write Web) March 13
  7. EXCLUSIVE: Google To Retire Blogger & Picasa Brands in Google+ Push (Mashable) July 5
  8. Secret Fed Loans Gave Banks $13B Undisclosed to Congress (Bloomberg) Nov. 28
  9. And Now Yahoo Has Put Itself Up for Sale (Business Insider) Sept. 7
  10. Microsoft Acquires Skype for $8.5 Billion (Mashable) May 10

Most professionals read these stories on our personalized business news site, LinkedIn Today, which is growing rapidly. There are now hundreds of thousands of unique domains actively using the LinkedIn Share button on their sites to send content into the LinkedIn platform.

10 Most-Shared Publishers in 2011:

  1. BBC
  2. New York Times
  3. Guardian
  4. Huffington Post
  5. Washington Post
  6. CNN
  7. Forbes
  8. Wired
  9. Gizmodo
  10. Fast Company

Want to keep up with LinkedIn Today in the New Year? It's easy. Follow @LinkedInToday on Twitter and check in to the site regularly to stay informed about what's happening in your industry.