No surprises here, but a recently conducted study of our users and demographics yielded fascinating insight into the four major groups of the 31 million users who populate LinkedIn today. Curious? Check out Ad Age’s post on this topic but if you just want a Cliff’s note version of it, read on.

Tom Anderson from Anderson Analytics who conducted the study says:

“I recently had a client who only wanted Fortune 500 company VP-level executives in human resources. I’m not sure where else you can get access to that,” said Tom Anderson, managing partner, Anderson Analytics.

As someone who’s closely involved in speaking to users and filming many of their Aha moments on LinkedIn, I can vouch for that. Take a look at some of our users and their stories here [2 minute video clips].

LinkedIn Users and their Aha moments

But, I digress… here’s the breakdown of LinkedIn users (as of today). Which category do you belong to?

Here are the four major user groups on LinkedIn:

1. Savvy Networkers (30%) – D’uh moment here, but these are the folks whom the Tipping Point describes as “Influencers”. On average they have around 61 connections.

2. Senior Executives (28%) – No surprise again or was it? Higher income, higher purchasing power and happily employed. These are the folks you want to up-connect with.

3. Late Adopters (22%) – These folks are there for their friends, peers and colleagues and don’t want to be left out of the party. But as I interview many of these successful users, I realize how many from this category experience their own Aha moment. For e.g. read how this exec stumbled upon an old client and a $1M deal!

4. Exploring Options (20%) – These users are (maybe) looking to advance their career. I look at them as the stage right before they become savvy networkers.

I believe all professionals are in one of the following categories. You may start off as a late adopter, but then for one reason or the other you decide to explore your options. It could be the economy or a bad boss or it could just be that you’re ambitious. Slowly but surely, you see yourself move into the savvy networker category and as you raise your profile and go through your career, you end up as a senior executive.

So, which stage of your career are you in?