LinkedIn CEO Jeff Weiner on Profit, Growth, IPO!

Jeff Weiner, chief executive officer for LinkedIn Corp., talks about the company's second-quarter profit reported (http://www.bloomberg.com/video/73580322/) and growth strategy. The largest professional-networking website said profit excluding certain costs was $10.8 million, or 10 cents a share. Weiner speaks with Betty Liu and Jon Erlichman on Bloomberg Television's "In the Loop." (Source: Bloomberg).

Clavier Says LinkedIn's IPO Unlocks Company's Potential!

Jeff Clavier, founder and president of SoftTech VC, discusses LinkedIn Corp.'s initial public offering today and the outlook for IPOs by other social media companies. LinkedIn is the largest professional-networking website. Clavier speaks with Margaret Brennan on Bloomberg Television's.









http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xiszyb_clavier-says-linkedin-s-ipo-unlocks-company-s-potential_news

Clavier Expects Zynga Valuation to Rise With an IPO

Zynga is the creator of Farmville, a gaming app that millions of people play on Facebook. 


Believe it or not, it's amazing how the Social Media Stock Market has entered into this sector.








Jeff Clavier, founder and president of SoftTech VC, talks about the possibility of an initial public offering by Zynga Inc. Zynga, the biggest maker of games on Facebook, may file for an IPO by the end of June, a person familiar with the plans said. Ritter speaks with Deirdre Bolton and Matt Miller on Bloomberg.




 http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xiwxa2_clavier-expects-zynga-valuation-to-rise-with-an-ipo_news

LinkedIn, Pandora Stocks Are Perking Up!

By Shira Ovide

At its highest price on the day of its IPO last may, LinkedIn’s market value was an eye popping $11.6 billion — or about 30 times the annualized pace of its revenue this year. By comparison, Apple is trading at less than 5 times the estimates of its annual revenue.


Pandora, which has a business model that seems to render it nearly incapable of turning a profit, had broken below the price of its IPO weeks ago. But after selling its debut shares at $16 each, and then seeing shares drop as low as $12.16 in recent days, Pandora is today in the $15 range.


To be sure, the share prices of Pandora and LinkedIn have been on roller-coaster rides, made more volatile by a very small number of shares out there for investors to buy (and sell). It’s entirely possible that anytime the overall market starts to show small doses of optimism, any one with short positions in these stocks is getting squeezed, putting some loft into stock prices.


But for backers of LinkedIn and Pandora, they’ll take the stock-price gains. 

Morgan Stanley Makes Big Bet on LinkedIn

By Shira Ovide

Morgan Stanley, which led the IPO of LinkedIn, must really, really believe in the company. The Wall Street firm and investment funds it manages hoovered up about one-quarter of the social-networking company’s publicly available stock.


In a regulatory filing, Morgan Stanley and its asset-management arm reported owning nearly 23% of class A shares in LinkedIn.


UPDATE: A person familiar with the matter said the vast majority of the Morgan Stanley LinkedIn stock was purchased in the open market, rather than as part of the IPO.


That means that clients in Morgan Stanley funds are likely underwater on the LinkedIn investment so far. As Deal Journal previously noted, LinkedIn shares are trading at their lowest point since the company’s much heralded stock debut. That means on their financial statements. (However, Morgan Stanley and other investors who were allocated stock in the IPO did very well. The company went public at $45 a share.)


Morgan Stanley and its funds hold nearly 2 million shares, or $148 million worth of LinkedIn stock with a price of $73.93 a share. The holdings may represent nearly one-quarter of LinkedIn’s publicly available stock, but the stock holdings are a dinky percentage of about 2% or so of the company overall.


Only a small percentage of LinkedIn’s stock was offered to the public in the IPO, and the small float may have contributed to the volatility in LinkedIn stock. Presumably, the Morgan Stanley funds bought and have held onto their LinkedIn shares, which means there is an even smaller float that is being traded furiously in LinkedIn.

LinkedIn Calls Grow Popular Amid Groupon Optimism!

Traders showed an affinity for LNKD's narrowly out-of-the-moneyJune 80 call, which saw more than 1,500 contracts change hands. The majority of the calls traded at the ask price, suggesting they were bought, and call open interest at the front-month strike surged by more than 800 contracts overnight, pointing to the initiation of new bullish bets.

Following social media concern Groupon. What's more, the optimism surrounding the debut has continued this morning, with the shares of LNKD defying a broad-market sell-off.

Google Dropped the Ball on Open Social Networks...Can Anyone Catch It?

by Sam Dean

Speaking at the D9 technology conference, Google Chairman and former CEO Eric Schmidt said he takes responsibility for failing to counter Facebook's growth in the social networking space. Schmidt attributed the failure to being 'busy' and there is no question that social networking has been an Achilles heel for Google. Its major efforts in the space, including Orkut and Google Buzz, have not found success. Still, the major social networks are walled gardens, and if any company can push more open social networking standards, it has to be Google. 


If you've used Twitter and Facebook for any length of time, you've probably come to notice that they are walled gardens-closed systems. We've noted before that, as popular communications tools, Twitter and Facebook harken back to the early days of email, when you had to, say, have an MCI Mail or CompuServe account to email other people who had the same types of accounts. In email's case, that quickly changed, and a more open approach won out. 


There are open alternatives to popular social networks in development. Diaspora is a particularly notable one. But Diaspora is an upstart project that represents no threat to Facebook at this point. Among other things, Diaspora introduces unnecessary levels of complexiy to social networking. It's also worth noting that Identi.ca has been pursuing open source social networking for a long time, but has a tiny fraction of Facebook's audience. 


The failure of open source tools to compete with juggernauts like Facebook and Twitter comes from the contagion factor that drives social networks forward. After all, only a few years ago, MySpace was all the rage, and Friendster had its day as well. At this point, it promises to be very hard for Google or any other company to challenge the hegemony of Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn. 


In the long run, Facebook will likely face more serious challenges from open alternatives to its service. However, Schmidt's acknowledgement that he dropped the ball on social networking is significant. More than any other technology space, the leading contagion-driven social networks leave little room for any dropped balls. Google has the best chance at taking a shot, since it has popular tools such as Gmail and Google Apps, but its window of opportunity to challenge the walled gardens is rapidly closing.