Facebook for workers website LinkedIn has set the price for which its shares will initially be sold. The company will sell shares at between $32 and $35 each, which will raise about $271m. This is the first time that LinkedIn is offering shares to the public. It is selling 7.84 million shares, according to MarketWatch. The …

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Monday 9th May 2011 14:50 GMT Anonymous Coward

$3.3bn

Any patents ? Any method of stopping a copy-cat if they decide they need to actually make *significant* revenue and hence start charging ? Facebook has games, there is only so much people will be willing to pay for LinkedIn's charged for services. If there was an economic boom, recruiters would pay handsomely - but there isn't !

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Monday 9th May 2011 15:10 GMT Anonymous Coward

boat went ->

That ship has sailed. LinkedIn was the buzz three years ago but hardly gets a mention now. It will be interesting to see how it does, but there isn't much to the site itself so I would be wary of viewing it as a benchmark for anything.

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Monday 9th May 2011 15:14 GMT AllWalk

So... Facebook has 5x as many users...

Not as defined revenue models, higher server costs, less valuable data (/not validated until recently... even then in a weak form)...

But is supposedly worth 20 times more than LinkedIn.

Bubble much?

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Monday 9th May 2011 15:14 GMT Rafael 1

Grrr.

Is this why they've increased the number of messages from people I don't care about and want to add me to their network?

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1. Monday 9th May 2011 16:06 GMT TheBully
  
  Closed my account
  
  I recently closed my account because I kept getting emails every day reminding me to connect with random sales people. I never used to get the constant reminders only in the last few months.
  
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2. Monday 9th May 2011 22:07 GMT AndrueC
  
  Could be.
  
  I've also noticed that some people think that sharing the same employer is good enough reason to invite you. I know we're supposed to trust colleagues but when you have a couple of thousand of them and have only ever met half a dozen it seems crazy to get several dozen invites.
  
  Maybe I'm too picky but I only invite or accept invites from people I personally know and have had a decent amount of interaction with. I don't see why being part of the same large multinational corporation should suddenly entitle people to my respect and recommendation. In fact management are a pretty good example of why it shouldn't :)
  
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Monday 9th May 2011 15:39 GMT Anonymous Coward

I think LinkedIn is going downhill

I think LinkedIn is going downhill, too many people just connect to everybody and it send too much mail these days.

Just from where I work, there have been several people who send a linked in invitation after they are giving the "introduction tour" of the office. A link to/from them has less than zero value.

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Monday 9th May 2011 20:37 GMT Wider Web

file as spam

GMail helpfully directs all LinkedIn email to my spam folder by default

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Monday 9th May 2011 20:41 GMT Erik4872

Different but similar bubble this time?

So -- I lived in Bubble Central during the last dotcom boom (NYC, not SF) and very clearly remember some parallels:

- Companies with a shaky (or no) revenue model -- check.

- Gimmicky companies with not much beyond an IPO pitch -- check.

- Metric tons of advertising in every form possible for pets.com, drkoop.com, etc. -- check, but different this time

- Talking heads saying "it's different this time around" -- check.

- Insane tech spend, and spending millions on marketing/parties/etc -- not so much.

Don't get me wrong; I think this social media bubble is going to burn itself out eventually. Investors are going to wake up one day and realize, "hey, there's only a certain percentage of people who will pay to play games on Facebook, or subscribe to "LinkedIn Premium Services" and that'll be that. The difference this time is that there's not the huge tech explosion we saw in the late 90s, simply because everyone's on the Internet already so hardware/comms/infrastructure have already been bought.

LinkedIn does have a revenue model - it's the world's biggest hypertargeted recruiter spam machine. That, and all the freelancing warrior types trying to drum up a living are the paying customers. I like it because it makes it easy for me to keep a work contact list. I don't like the constant friend requests from random sales weasels just because I happen to work for Company X and they're trying to weasel their way in.

A new spin on a famous quote -- "When your local scrap metal dealer is telling you to follow them on Facebook and Twitter, it's time to sell."

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