LinkedIn Uploads Slideshare

LinkedIn and Slideshare

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The takeover and initial public offering (IPO) season appears to be in full swing in technology market and following Microsofts dive into Barnes and Noble we now have LinkedIn’s acquisition of Slideshare and Facebook’s share price for its upcoming IPO being set at at between $28 and $35 per share, which values the company at between $85bn-$95bn (£52bn-£59bn).

The Facebook IPO is now set to become the largest internet share offer topping Google's 2004 valuation of $23bn. News Corp must be kicking its heels that it got it so wrong with MySpace who were number one only a few years ago and are now slipping into obscurity.

LinkedIn is the biggest socil network for professionals and is the place to not only connect to your business network but to find people and jobs. It is like a gaint Roldex and who’s who of the business world, hosting discussion groups and connecting business people to business people. It not surprising that they have now acquired Slideshare for US$118.75m. Slideshare is what it says on the tin a place to share slides which as everyone knows are used everyday by business people and in business conferences. SlideShare users have uploaded more than nine million presentations and had nearly 29 million unique visitors last March.

So we now have the social giant Facebook which is reshaping how we share and communicate in communities and with friends and LinkedIn which is starting to reshape how business people connect, reconnect and expand their networks and knowledge. LinkedIn has still got some places to go and could still have some parts of the jigsaw to plug in but is clearly destined to grow further. An ex collegue said to me recently that he didn’t get LinkedIn until he lost his job and now he gets it 100%.

The new LinkedIn will now enable professionals to also discover people through their presentation content and that starts to open up significant avenues for further growth as well as becoming an effective store and archive of business content. Imagine if LinkedIn next bought the likes of Wattpad? 

LinkedIn to Float

The business and professional social network site LinkedIn is to float on the New York stock exchange valuing the company at over $3bn. LinkedIn, has some 100 million users and achieved a profit of $15.4m on $243m revenues in 2010, is expecting to raise $146m with its flotation.

LinkedIn has a professional demographic which makes it very appealing to advertisers looking for high spenders and decision makers. It now joins a group of highly valued internet sites such as Skype, Groupon, and Zynga, which all aim to raise huge money with their flotations in the next 12 months. LinkedIn also has both a free basic offer to members as well as a premium services aimed at the corporate market. Its revenue is made up from; Job listings and recruitment contributed (41%) of net revenue, Advertising revenue (32%) and paid subscriptions (27%).

LinkedIn clearly has huge potential in the area of search and selection recruitment and this itself can fund subscriptions, the need to belong and be seen and connect.

Are You Linkedin?

Facebook is for friends and family, whereas Linkedin is for business and contacts and Skype for international VOIP. That’s the way we use the three social networking sites with Twitter often a mere distraction and something does less and less of.

Now Linkedin has announced an initial public offering which could value it at some $3bn.This may be tiny in comparison to Facebook’s $50bn valuation, but it marks a maturing of these social sites and if successful, could lead to others such as Twitter, Skype and Groupon following their lead. It also shows the high valuation of these companies in comparison to their revenues and profit, (Linkedin generated $161.4 mill revenues and $10 mill profit mainly through its premium subscription service in the first three quarters of 2010).

Facebook today claims some 600 million members to Linkedin’s 90 million users, but both are growing at a significant pace, both globally and within communities. Facebook being more personal attracts a different advertising and sometimes demographic profile that the business focused Linkedin. Here Linkedin can score with members with high disposable incomes and often large business budgets. Linkedin can also literally connect new business opportunities and even, stimulate job changes and advancement.

These new social giants are interestingly now competing for our attention whilst not competing in their offer. Its more a case users finding the right ‘horses for the right course’.

Are You LinkedIn?

So we have teenagers on Bebo and Myspace, students and young aspiring socialites on Facebook and professionals on LinkedIn. The world divides into social clubs. They are all trying new things with degrees of success or in the case of Beacon and Facebook failure. LinkedIn, which was the fastest-growing social network in October, attracting over 17 million registered users globally and about 5 million unique visitors in the US.

Now LinkedIn has opened up outside software developers, starting with BusinessWeek magazine. LinkedIn’s aim to migrate from an online contacts and referral database into an indispensable daily tool for business users. It is also participating, along with MySpace, in Google Inc's OpenSocial developer network that seeks to create a way for all developers to write software that will work on all platforms. MySpace is also a member of OpenSocial.

McGraw-Hill's BusinessWeek will link keywords, such as company names, to the LinkedIn service. Visitors to the BusinessWeek site, who place their mouse pointers over certain keywords will trigger a pop-up box detailing how many of their LinkedIn contacts are related to the company or keyword. Unlike Facebook LinkedIn win have greater control over what developers do on the service and thereby avoid it being taking over by some of the less useful and frivolous developments that have found themselves on Facebook.

The latest rumour is that LinkedIn may soon be acquired by News Corp and would make a logical sister for the recently acquired Wall Street Journal publisher Dow Jones & Co Inc this week.