LinkedIn worth $1bn

20th June 2008

A new cash investment has valued LinkedIn, the networking website for the business community, at $1 billion (£512 million).

The site's chief executive Dan Nye claims that the site should generate revenues of between $75 million and $100 million in 2008.

Private equity form Bain Capital led the funding round that launched LinkedIn into the big time community of billion-dollar websites.

However, the Financial Times pointed out that the online community differs from its peers, such as Facebook, as it charges for some premium features.

Facebook, founded by former Harvard student Mark Zuckerberg, was valued at $15 billion when Microsoft bought a $240 million stake in it last year.

The site was recently named the second most-popular social networking portal in the US by web traffic monitoring service Hitwise.

MySpace's 72.72 per cent market share made it the number-one networking hub, while runner-up Facebook took a 16.24 per cent slice.