LinkedIn: The IPO Chain Reactor, Raising Money
Will their move be the catalyst of more IPOs of its kind to come?
LinkedIn, a professional networking site based in northern California, filed for IPO last week making it one of the first social networking site seeking to go public. This is causing much industry buzz as many investors attempt to evaluate the company’s worth and what this means for other companies of its kind.
With roughly 90 million registered users in more than 200 countries, LinkedIn offers a means for business professionals to connect, communicate and stay up-to-date with their contacts, selected industry and groups. In addition, this site provides a means to find jobs and business opportunities, as well as obtain answers from the community via LinkedIn Answers and LinkedIn Polls.
"We believe we are transforming the way people work by connecting talent with opportunity at massive scale. Our goal is to provide a global platform capable of mapping every professional's experience, skills and other relevant professional data to his or her professional graph, including connections with colleagues and business contacts," stated LinkedIn in its SEC filing.
As for how LinkedIn makes its money, LinkedIn offers the normal advertisement space, created Corporate Accounts providing firms full access to the LinkedIn user base to find new recruits instead of paying out to recruitment firms, and a four-tiered account system that gives users the option of adding more features beyond their normal free account.
These forms of revenue streams seem to be working well for LinkedIn, having posted $161 million net revenue in the first nine months of 2010. LinkedIn is backed by its underwriters Bank of America Merrill Lynch, Morgan Stanley and JP Morgan Chase and aims to raise roughly $175 million in its initial public offering.
It will be interesting to see how things progress with LinkedIn’s IPO, as this may lead in a slew of other similar companies, such as Facebook, following suit in playing in the public stock arena.
[ Source: Yahoo News, Reuters ]
- AT&T Rolls Out New Data Plan for Heavy Users
- Dumping AT&T? Verizon iPhone 4 Pre-orders Open
- Less Revealing Body Scanner Demoed in Airports
- 'Plenty of Fish' Breach Involves Blackmail, Mafia?
- Side-by-Side Comparison of iPad 2, iPad 1 Screens
- People Returning the Galaxy Tab at a Rate of 16%
- T-Mobile Details the LG's 4G 3D G-Slate
- Google Accuses Microsoft Bing of Stealing Search
- Apple Pays $3.9 Billion To Secure Display Supply
- AT&T May have Inflated iPhone Data Bills
- Windows Drops Below 90-Percent Market Share
- Yahoo Pixel Density Filter to Fight Image Spam
- WikiLeaks Nominated for Nobel Peace Prize
- Intel: Use A Smartphone, Live Longer
- The Daily 'Newspaper' is Now Published on iPad
- HTC Pyramid Packs Dual-core 1.2 GHz CPU
- VIDEO: PlayStation Phone's 'Thumb Transplant' Ad
- Reuters: We Have a Witness Who Has Seen iPad 2
- VW's Super Bowl Ad Features Mini Darth Vader
Looking forward to LinkedIn's IPO as it is an interesting move and one that will indicate the future of other potential IPOs from other web companies.
It also indicates a strong belief in LinkedIn's model. If the IPO is successful, it will inject a lot of cash for the company to use to invest in better infrastructure and new developments.
Skype is another company to watch for as they are heading towards an IPO in the near future.
No way I will continue to use social networking if they go IPO. I don't want the public pushing the company to do things to increase their stupid stock prices.
Linkedin, for the hard working class, are the people that will survive.
Facebook, for the farmville wowtards, that I have no interest in whatsoever.
"It will be interesting to see how things progress with LinkedIn’s IPO, as this may lead in a slew of other similar companies, such as Facebook, following suit in playing in the public stock arena."
Not sure exactly where you learned to do reporting, but usually one would know about the "Slew" of articles in the past two weeks that have been written regarding Facebook going public....
will have to buy a couple of shares.