LinkedIn (Nasdaq: LNKD), the biggest online professional-networking service, climbed in extended trading after increased membership helped fourth-quarter profit and sales beat analysts’ estimates.

Revenue jumped 81 percent to $303.6 million, the company said in a statement yesterday. That topped the average analyst estimate of $279.7 million, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. Profit excluding some items was 35 cents a share, topping the average 19-cent projection.

Advertisers flocked to LinkedIn as its user base rose 8 percent to 202 million. As LinkedIn continues to establish itself as the most popular site for job seekers, the company is selling more subscriptions to help recruiters find the right people. Revenue from talent solutions, web-based software that recruiters and employers use to fill jobs, climbed 90 percent to $161 million, accounting for 53 percent of total sales.

“Investors clearly like LinkedIn’s mix of advertising and fee revenue, both of which are experiencing exceptional growth,” said Paul Sweeney, a Bloomberg Industries analyst in New York, who follows media and Internet companies.

LinkedIn, based in Mountain View, California, rose as much as 12 percent in late trading after the report. The stock fell 1.3 percent to $124.09 at yesterday’s close in New York.

Winning Streak

The results extended LinkedIn Corp.’s uninterrupted streak of exceeding analysts’ projections for both earnings and revenue. It marked the seventh consecutive quarter since LinkedIn’s May 2011 IPO that the company has pulled that off, to the delight of investors.

TBesides a 66 percent increase in earnings from the previous year, the latest quarter was highlighted by an influx of 15 million accounts to propel LinkedIn’s total membership beyond 200 million. Visitors to LinkedIn’s website also viewed 67 percent more pages than the previous year, an indication that the company’s efforts to add more business news and career tips from top business executives are paying off.

Wall Street’s embrace of LinkedIn contrasts with the cold response given to other Internet services that have gone public during the past few years. Most of them are trading below their IPO prices. The most notable is Facebook (Nasdaq: FB), whose stock is worth about 25 percent less than it was when it made its market debut in May.

Although both run websites devoted to connecting people with common interests, LinkedIn and Facebook are targeting different audiences. Facebook focuses mostly on letting friends and family share good times and swap stories, while LinkedIn concentrates on helping people advance their careers and helping companies fill jobs.

Facebook is the larger of the two services, with more than 1 billion active users and $5.1 billion in revenue last year. LinkedIn, which is based in Mountain View, Calif., has 202 million account holders and revenue of $972 million in 2012.

But LinkedIn is growing more quickly, partly because it’s less dependent on advertising than Facebook and most Internet services. In the fourth quarter, advertising accounted for 27 percent of LinkedIn’s revenue. The remainder comes from various tools that it sells to help recruit workers and glean more insights from the information that its users post on its website.

Some Prices Increasing 

Reflecting its belief that the member data are becoming increasingly valuable, LinkedIn said Thursday that it intends to raise some prices this year. Setting up a member profile remains free. The price increase reflects the additional information that the company has accumulated as its membership has more than doubled in less than two years, according to Steve Sordello, LinkedIn’s chief financial officer. The company provided no specifics on the increases.

LinkedIn earned $11.5 million, or 10 cents per share, during the final three months of last year. That compared to $6.9 million, or 6 cents per share, a year earlier.

If not for the costs of employee stock compensation and certain other charges, LinkedIn said it would have earned 35 cents per share. That was far above the average estimates of 19 cents per share among analysts surveyed by FactSet.

Revenue soared 81 percent from the previous year to $304 million — about $24 million above analyst forecasts.

LinkedIn’s revenue outlook for the current quarter and all of 2013 were roughly in line with analyst estimates, setting the stage for the company to clear those financial hurdles once again.

Management’s forecast for annual revenue of $1.4 billion this year appears conservative, given that it would translate into an increase of about 45 percent from last year. In 2012, LinkedIn’s annual revenue rose 86 percent.

“We are trying to utilize a prudent approach to year-over-year growth,” Sordello told analysts during an analyst conference call.

(The AP and Bloomberg contributed to this report.)