Dive Brief: 

• LinkedIn reported a 44% year over year revenue growth for Q4. 
• The site's hiring business can be credited with pushing growth—it reported a 50% increase in revenue for each of the last three quarters. 
• Revenue from marketing solutions rose by 56%, which is driven by "sponsored updates" that has doubled from the previous quarter and nearly tripled from the previous year. 

Dive Insight: 

LinkedIn seems to have hit the right chord with advertisers by offering the perfect style of ads to serve the market. The site has a bit of an advantage because it is more niche than other social networks, it's easier to target the right advertisers. It is also queued up for an eventful 2015, as it acquired Bizo, a marketing-solutions platform, last July. LinkedIn is slated to roll out several new marketing-solutions products as a result of the Bizo acquisition this year—making the site even more attractive to marketers.

Of the site's growth, CEO Jeff Weiner said in a recorded statement:  "We continued our transition from desktop to mobile, and also focused on initiatives in jobs, content, and global expansion. While still early, we made significant progress on these priorities in 2014, and maintained solid growth across all member ecosystem metrics while delivering record financial results.”