LinkedIn IPO: Towards A Web 2.0 Bubble?

The general public (followed by the professionals) tends to concentrate on Facebook when it comes to Web 2.0. This is to forget some extremely active players however, as the LinkdedIn IPO showed last week.

Facebook may be top dog in terms of social networking but there's plenty of room for other networks with other roles to play. Twitter has gained in importance recently in the delivery of news and in the professional world LinkedIn has been the reference for a long time as a sort of gigantic address book, recommendation and job offer network. It was priced at USD 45 per share on launch last week and by the end of its first day on the markets this had risen to USD 94.25, with a peak of almost USD 122. This is the biggest IPO pop since the introduction of Baidu, the Chinese Google, in 2005.

At the end of the first day of trading, LinkenIn had a market value of over USD 8 billion, making multi millionaires out of founders such as Reid Hoffman. For the moment of course, LinkedIn, like Facebook or Twitter, is yet to turn in any profits and some analysts fear a Web 2.0 bubble much like the bubble of the early noughties when many start-ups failed overnight.

We'll no doubt have to wait to see if LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter and others will be the Googles of tomorrow or not.


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