You've already read the stories in the Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg, MarketWatch, and others about LinkedIn's long-awaited IPO, which started trading this morning on the New York Stock Exchange, ticker symbol LNKD.
The Mountain View, California-based company sold 7.84 million shares priced at $45 each, according to a statement released yesterday, and the stock has already more than doubled in today's trading.
LinkedIn has been a tremendous godsend to the investment banking community - which has been waiting patiently for the social media industry to finally start raining.
Clearly, an IPO sends a strong message that a company is viable enough to seek funding from millions of individual and institutional investors, but what does this IPO mean for those of us toiling away every day in the social media world? What should we be on the lookout for?
More importantly, with LinkedIn's 2010 revenue of only $15.4 million, are we headed for another bubble?
It Won't Be 1999 Anytime Soon
LinkedIn's IPO went ahead because it is one social media player whose revenue model is not based solely on advertising or premium subscriptions, otherwise known as the freemium model.
Because the company collects money from both individuals and businesses, this diversity in revenue and services makes LinkedIn unique. The largest revenue generator, "LinkedIn Jobs," which is a jobs matching or automated headhunting service, delivered 42% or $101.9 million to the company's bottom line last year. Few other social media players can claim such diversified revenue streams, making successful IPOs of other companies difficult.
As such, don't expect another hot social media IPO anytime soon, and the social media startup you're working at, doing business with, or thinking about joining probably won't be going public.
Sorry, folks.
What Will the New LinkedIn Do Now?
LinkedIn will eventually use the stock as a currency to go on an acquisition binge. It is expected to chase smaller B2B social media applications which have struggled to build revenue - such as Hashable, Quora, SlideShare, or Yammer.
Hashable, an online service wherein users tweet or send email messages about business interactions using certain hashtags, aims to show members the 'strength of their network,' and is a natural fit for LinkedIn.
Quora, the hot Q&A site, is nearly identical to LinkedIn's own Answers feature, with more social sharing features baked in. If LinkedIn does acquire Quora, expect the Answers feature to be rebranded, "Powered by Quora."
As such, if you are a user, premium subscriber to, or advertiser of some of these premium B2B social sites, you may eventually be doing business with LinkedIn.
Answering the Phone
Other thoughts about LinkedIn's functionality include the site - finally - offering a chat capability, or eventually building in a unified communications and collaboration (UC&C) feature, such as SlideShare's launch of instant meeting service this year, known as Zipcast.
With Skype now belonging to Microsoft, and Microsoft keen to monetize the Internet telephony service, however, it doesn't appear likely that Skype will be the UC&C provider for LinkedIn.
More Pages
The social media manager now has a stronger business case to convince senior management, other employees, or the client, to jump in to LinkedIn.
While Facebook Pages seem to have garnered the spotlight, LinkedIn has not quietly sat on the sidelines. The Companies feature was launched two years ago, and offers companies a way to present their products and services in a clear, straightforward manner (there are character limits for the main "Overview" description). It may not offer the robust features of a Facebook Page - yet - but the ability for user-generated content ("Products & Services") is there, as well as analytics.
As monitoring and measurement have become the new marching orders for all of us, LinkedIn will make more of a commitment in this area so we can prove to our paymasters the value of social media.
Jake will be moderating a Frost & Sullivan webinar on Wednesday, July 20, 'The 7 Highly Effective Secrets to Building a Successful Marketing Strategy.' To register, please click here, http://www.frost.com/7secrets.