By Gadjo Cardenas Sevilla

Popular business and career social networking portal LinkedIn Corp. has announced plans to open up shop in Canada to better support its growing number of users which have doubled in number to two million members from a year ago.

Canada is one of the most agressive and fastest growing markets for LinkedIn. The Mountain View, Calif.-based company has been the social media nexus for business relationships and career connections. It gained popularity during the recession as job hunts and career opportunities were in flux.  Canada is one of the fastest-growing countries in LinkedIn’s 200-country network of users.

“We look at a range of factors when we go into a country – including our penetration, how many professionals there are and also the overall economic opportunity. And in all of those measures, Canada scored really high,”  explained Arvind Rajan, LinkedIn’s vice-president of international operations.

LinkedIn plans on opening an office in Canada and will he hiring staff to help ramp up its operations. LinkedIn joins a number of Internet companies such as Google, PayPal and eBay that have opened offices in Canada to better focus on this particular market and its users.The company says it now has a new member joining about every second, for a total of more than 60 million members. Half its members are in the U.S., where it’s now the third-largest networking site, according to ComScore, a company that measures web traffic.Canada will mark LinkedIn’s sixth office worldwide, and the company says the country has the fastest growth along with India, the Netherlands and Australia. Expanding its Canadian presence has become its top international priority, Mr. Rajan says.

LinkedIn says that a new member joining about every second, for a total of more than 60 million members. One half of  its members are based in the U.S., where it is now the third-largest networking site behind Facebook and Twitter.