Linkedin valued at a billion dollars

LinkedIn, the social-networking site for career advancement has just received a whopping US$53 million in funding, pushing its valuation up to a cool US$1 billion.

The site, which encourages business networking amongst its 23 million members, and does not include poking or throwing sheep at people, is the latest social networking site to get itself a billion dollar evaluation.

In its latest round of venture capital funding, Linkedin networked its way into getting the likes of Bain Capital, Sequoia Capital, Greylock Partners and Bessemer Venture Partners to cough up US$53 million between them.

The hefty sum, however, still doesn’t come close to Facebook’s US$15 billion valuation, bestowed on them when Microsoft decided to see off the competition (Google and Yahoo) by buying a ‘small’ stake in the 116 million-user company.

Still, at least Linkedin actually turns a good profit by selling mainly online job adverts and allowing big companies to avail themselves (for a fee) of its system for headhunting and recruiting.

The aforementioned money-makers managed to double the company’s overall revenues this year, pulling in between US$75 million and US$100 million.

Perhaps not terribly surprising as Linkedin’s founder, Reid Hoffman, knows a thing or two about money.

He used to be an executive at Paypal.

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