LinkedIn to trigger social web’s IPOs

SAN FRANCISCO: LinkedIn’s plan to raise $175 million in an initial public offering may be the first in a wave of share sales for US social-networking companies. Other companies that foster online interaction may follow suit.

LinkedIn is at the forefront of social-web startups that aim to replicate the successes of pioneers, such as Google and Amazon.

The largest professional-networking site plans an IPO after turning a profit in the first nine months of last year and more than tripling revenue between 2007 and 2009, it said in a filing last week with the US Securities and Exchange Commission.

“LinkedIn is bringing the very hot concept of social networking to the practical business world,” said Dixon Doll, co-founder of California based venture-capital firm DCM. “The social-networking phenomenon may be in the fourth or fifth inning and none of these have gotten public yet.” Social deals site Groupon, is in talks with banks for an offering this year, while Facebook may pursue an IPO in 2012.

But Jim Breyer, a managing partner at venture capital firm Accel Partners, said if it was up to him he wouldn’t take LinkedIn public now. There’s “always danger” of a social- networking bubble, he said at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. Accel was an early investor in Facebook and Groupon.