LinkedIn Now Valued at Over $1 Billion

3 comments

Today, LinkedIn announced a new round of funding, raising $53 million to fund growth of its four revenue streams (one of which is recruiting focused). As a result of the funding, LinkedIn is now valued at over $1 billion.

The $1 billion valuation for LinkedIn is the latest in a series of deals that have placed price tags on the bustling online networking sector, largely centered in Silicon Valley. Other deals include AOL’s acquisition of Bebo in March for $850 million; News Corp.’s $580 million purchase of MySpace in July 2005 and Microsoft’s $240 million strategic investment for a 1.6 percent stake in Facebook in October. Analysts said Microsoft, struggling to compete with Google and Yahoo on the Internet, was willing to pay a premium that theoretically valued Facebook at $15 billion.

Social networks, especially the recognized brands like LinkedIn, are still command a healthy premium in the market.  With LinkedIn’s continued subscription growth and user engagement, I sense some anticipated courting as an acquisition candidate.  Thanks to Yahoo, Microsoft now has some extra bucks sitting in the bank account…

  • http://fersht.typepad.com/the_outsourcing_bloghorse/2008/02/linkedin-tips.html Phil Fersht

    LinkedIn has a great database of members, but that’s about it. It seems to be the one social networking tool that has attracted professional people onto it, most of whom have no clue what Facebook even is. However, whomever buys it should invest in the functionality of the site. Beyond the “Q&A” feature, which is quite useful, the “Groups” functionality is useless – it’s nothing more than a list of people to connect with. In addition, I’d imagine most long-time LinkedInners use the tool as nothing more than an online contact database.

    Bottom-line, it’s free, it’s useful, but has a whole lot more potential that is currently provides. Hopefully Microsoft, or whomever buys it, can bring it into the current age of social networking apps. $1bn is a lot of money for a database, but starting a new professional-networking site from scratch may wind up costing even more to get as many users as LinkedIn…

    Phil

  • Mark Roberts

    Linked In has been a good way to maintain connections both professionally and personally, with some opportunity also to prospect for potential new business contacts. Over the past year I have seen that most people do keep an active profile and update it as needed. Many of my contacts use my connections to Link In with others, and I have done the same. I am glad to see that the company is doing well.

  • http://www.mentorscout.com Laura

    Linked In is a very useful tool. I use the Question and Answer all the time. However, most of my questions and connections are either industry specific or company specific. I would like to see more companies and associations use this type of Social Networking software internally, rather than in such a general forum as Linked In.

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