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    Categories: Social Networking

What Does the LinkedIn IPO Signify?

Last week when business social networking site LinkedIn went public, the stock shot up from $45 per share to more than $90, and even today is trading at $96-plus per share. The company’s valuation is more than $9 billion, even though the company had earnings of just $15.4 million last year. That kind of eye-popping debut on the public markets has business journalists wondering if a tech bubble is back. Sure, things are different now, and not every Tom, Dick and Pets.com is trying for an IPO as in the last bubble. But you can bet your bottom dollar that any company with a social media angle will be considering going public now. Already, social gaming company Zynga is considering filing to go public next month.

What do you think the LinkedIn IPO signifies in the long run? Is it a return to the dot-com craze, a social media bubble or something else? Vote in our poll or explain your position in detail in the comments.



> Mediatwits #8: LinkedIn’s Bubbly IPO; Grueskin on the New York World at MediaShift

> LinkedIn IPO Soars, Feeding Web Boom WSJ

> Lessons Learned from LinkedIn’s Blockbuster IPO at Atlantic Wire

> Zynga, Maker of Facebook Games, Plans an IPO at Bloomberg

Mark Glaser :Mark Glaser is founder and executive director of MediaShift. He contributes regularly to Digital Content Next’s InContext site and newsletter. Glaser is a longtime freelance journalist whose career includes columns on hip-hop, reviews of videogames, travel stories, and humor columns that poked fun at the titans of technology. From 2001 to 2005, he wrote a weekly column for USC Annenberg School of Communication's Online Journalism Review. Glaser has written essays for Harvard's Nieman Reports and the website for the Yale Center for Globalization. Glaser has written columns on the Internet and technology for the Los Angeles Times, CNET and HotWired, and has written features for the New York Times, Conde Nast Traveler, Entertainment Weekly, the San Jose Mercury News, and many other publications. He was the lead writer for the Industry Standard's award-winning "Media Grok" daily email newsletter during the dot-com heyday, and was named a finalist for a 2004 Online Journalism Award in the Online Commentary category for his OJR column. Glaser won the Innovation Journalism Award in 2010 from the Stanford Center for Innovation and Communication. Glaser received a Bachelor of Journalism and Bachelor of Arts in English at the University of Missouri at Columbia, and currently lives in San Francisco with his wife Renee and his two sons, Julian and Everett. Glaser has been a guest on PBS' "Newshour," NPR's "Talk of the Nation," KALW's "Media Roundtable" and TechTV's "Silicon Spin." He has given keynote speeches at Independent Television Service's (ITVS) Diversity Retreat and the College Media Assocation's national convention. He has been part of the lecture/concert series at Yale Law School and Arkansas State University, and has moderated many industry panels. He spoke in May 2013 to the Maui Business Brainstormers about the "Digital Media Revolution." To inquire about speaking opportunities, please use the site's Contact Form.

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