MARKET WATCH — Dec 21 — VCs are close to finalizing a venture capital round, investing $13 million and valuing LinkedIn (8.5 million members, 1.5 million uniques, 36 million PV's) at a post-financing valuation of $250 million. Linkedin CEO Reid Hoffman boldly predicts the company will hit $100 million revenues in 2008. Based on Linkedin's revenue run-rate, and its post-money valuation of $250 million, it's being valued similar to Monster.com which trades for about 5x sales. Consumers are expected to increasingly join smaller social networks as they find more comfort in sites where they can connect with others based on similar interests. Sports Illustrated just inked a deal with one-year-old Takkle.com, a social network for high school athletes. Linkedin has three revenue streams today — sponsorships, subscriptions to scour and contact Linkedin's 8.5 million membership base, and job listings. About 45% of the revenue comes from subscriptions. Corporations pay between $10,000 and $100,000 annually to let their internal recruiting staff use Linkedin's database for potential hires. Individuals also pay $20 per month to be able to contact people outside their network (1% to 2% of the members).
The full article was originally published at Market Watch, but is no longer available.
Mark Brooks: Facebook is now open to the world. LinkedIn will be able to take advantage of Facebooks loss of focus. I think Facebook users will eventually shift to other student focused sites and graduate to other sites that are more focused on their more specific needs. Your comments please.
LA TIMES — Dec 25 — Mixi's highly specialized online shopping circles, 900,000 virtual communities are nurtured within the 6-million-strong empire of Mixi users. In Japan such communities have become so strongly linked to the real world in recent years that they now can affect the behavior of consumers at venues as diverse as pet shops and noodle bars. MySpace is determined to muscle in on this scene. In November, MySpace announced a joint venture with Internet and telecommunications group Softbank in a move that should see a fully localized PC-based version of MySpace operating in Japan in March. Mixi is invitation-only and receives 750 million hits per month from PC users, and nearly 2 billion hits from Japanese accessing the service on their mobile phones.
