LinkedIn Corporation (LNKD), the social networking company geared to professionals, launched its IPO yesterday with a huge bang. The stock opened up for trading at $83 compared to its IPO price of $45 per share. Within a couple of hours the stock hit $122.69! That’s an increase of 172% from its $45 price! The stock closed at $94.25 per share at the end of its first day of trading.

The price gives the company a whopping valuation of $8.91 billion, for a company that had a net income of just $15 million in 2010, on revenues of $243 million.

On a very thin base of earnings, investors propelled its value from a mere 206 times its 2010 earnings of $0.17 a share to 584 by the end of the day. That�s 37 times the market average P/E of 16. It�s hard to imagine that the company will ever earn its way into a valuation of 584 times earnings.

Will LinkedIn be able to sustain this valuation and grow like a Google? Or are these prices a result from an over-excited market which will ultimately lead to a lower valuation?

LinkedIn, founded in 2003, �is the world’s largest professional network on the Internet with more than 100 million members in over 200 countries and territories, which currently includes executives from every Fortune 500 Company. The company, with headquarters in Mountain View, California, has a diversified business model with revenues coming from member subscriptions, advertising sales and hiring solutions.

LinkedIn Headquarters

With a valuation similar to LinkedIn, Facebook would be valued at $100 billion and social buying site Groupon would be valued at $20 billion. Where LinkedIn has 100 million members, Facebook has 600 million. At $100 billion, Facebook would be worth more than twice the value of General Motors (GM), 66% more than Home Depot (HD), and 17% more than McDonald’s (MCD).

Apart from Facebook and Groupon, other internet companies that could soon make plans for an IPO are Twitter and Zynga.

Internet Bubble?

There is a huge difference between debt-fueled and equity-fueled bubbles. When the debt-fueled bubble burst in 2008, it destroyed $30 trillion in wealth. In comparison, the bursting of the 1995 to 2000 Internet Initial Public Offering (IPO) bubble wiped off a relatively paltry $6 trillion. It seems that IPO bubbles leave some value in their wake.

Are we heading for another Internet bubble?

Are we heading for another internet bubble burst?

Facebook is truly the greatest social networking website. It gives people the power to share and makes the world more open and connected. When used with integrity and with moral values,� it is a blessing and a most powerful tool.

Several weeks ago, I joined the Kolej Tun Datuk Tuanku Haji Bujang 1976 Facebook group and was able to reconnect with some of my Form 6 schoolmates through the group. We are planning a reunion tentatively scheduled to be held in Kuching in December 2012.

Cover of the 1976 Kolej Bujang school magazine

And today, through the Kolej Bujang group, I managed to connect with Mary Hii,� a schoolmate of mine from Prmary 1 till Form 6.� I saw several Form 3 classmates among Mary Hii’s Facebook friends and was thus able to link up with them again after 36 long years! What a blessing!

Form 3 class photo taken in 1972...guess which one is me?

It is thus not surprising that Facebook is the largest social network and ranked the number 2 top website on Alexa.com just after Google.com.� Thanks, Facebook!

Google has taken the plunge into the world of social media with its announcement about Google Buzz. Its foray into the social media is a melding of pieces of Facebook and Twitter.

Google Buzz is a new way to start conversations about the things you find interesting and share updates, photos, videos, links and more. There will be no more fuzzy little pictures: Buzz makes it easy to quickly flip through photos and experience them the way they were meant to be seen: big and full-resolution. And videos play inline so you can watch them without opening a new window.

Buzz is built right into Gmail, so you don�t have to peck out an entirely new set of friends from scratch � it just works. Buzz sets you up to follow the people you email and chat with the most. You have the choice to share publicly with the world or privately to a small group of friends each time you post. You can connect other sites you use, such as Picasa, Flickr, Google Reader, YouTube and Twitter, so your friends can easily keep up with what you’re doing online � all in one place.

Making sure that you don’t miss out on the best part of sharing, Buzz sends responses to your posts straight to your inbox. Unlike static email messages, buzz messages in your inbox are live conversations where comments appear in real time.

There are many basic tasks you can perform using Buzz such as leaving a comment on someone else’s buzz, liking it, or even emailing it. And you can make your buzzes private or public too. One of the major benefits is the excellent built-in search functionality. The Buzz search beats Twitter’s search hands down and is definitely one of its killer features.

You can follow the specific people whose posts you want to see, but Buzz also recommends posts from people you’re not directly following, often ones where your friends are having a lively conversation in the comments. If you’re not interested in a particular recommendation, just click the “Not interested” link and your feedback will help improve the recommendations system. Buzz also weeds out uninteresting posts from the people you follow � collapsing inactive posts and short status messages like “brb.” These early versions of ranking and recommendations are just a start; they’re working on improvements that will help you automatically sort through all the social data being produced to find the most relevant conversations that matter to you.

Buzz is also available on your mobile phone. It uses your mobile device and geo location technology to see where you are which can put context into the items that you share on the go. When you’re out on the move, a lot of the information you want to share often has to do with where you are or what you are doing: for example, you may want to buzz about a trendy hair saloon that you are patronising for the first time or the score of the English Premier League game you’re watching at a sports cafe. Buzz for mobile thus brings location to the forefront and makes it easy to have conversations about places. Additionally, the ability to see who is buzzing around you (it doesn�t matter whether you are following them or not) is really neat. Buzz�s integration with Google Maps comes in very handy to find �hot spots� or areas where people have left advice, tips and the like.

In the months to come, it will be very interesting to see how Google Buzz fares against Facebook. Will Buzz triumph over Facebook to become the �Google� of social media? Let�s wait and see!

Most of us are loyal Facebook users and enjoy the social aspects of the social networks.� We all love to use Twitter and to be honest in the beginning I had no clue how to work Twitter and I did not understand it.� The fact of the matter is that social networks are the way of the future and the way most people are communicating nowadays.� People are spending less time emailing each other and more time leaving messages on each others wall.� Theses companies are exploding in popularity and are estimated to worth in the billions of dollars.

There is only one problem.�These companies do not pay their members for all of the traffic and the advertising revenue that they generate.��PeopleString exploded onto the scene a few months ago and has been rising fast on the Alexa.com ranking.

So, what exactly is People String? It is a�new social media site�launched on September 23, 2009 to compete with giants like Facebook by paying anyone and everyone to recruit members and grow its ranks.

People String is also working with companies who want to bypass the advertising giants and pay people directly for looking at their products/services.�The more people participate, the more companies will see this as a viable alternative to reaching their target audience. PeopleString shares 70% of its revenue with its members. Just imagine getting paid for what you do online!

To get a preview of PeopleString, watch the following YouTube video:

It can potentially be quite lucrative for those willing to recruit new members.�They will earn a commission for every person they recruit, get paid per item of advertising they look at, thus getting a�percentage of revenues from�everyone they recruit for life! For those not interested in recruiting others, the remaining income streams may be more to their liking and more are to be added over time. You can join for free and still earn lots of money by referring others to join. There are some members who are now enjoying a monthly income of few thousand dollars

When you have a business where everyone who joins makes money even if that is $1 and you get a percentage of that $1, this gives you very powerful residual income potential.� Imagine getting a percentage of the ad revenue that your every member brings to Facebook every month.� Imagine sharing in the billions of dollars of ad revenue that Facebook generates on a monthly basis.� Yes it would be very profitable but more importantly it has the power to help those who otherwise would not be able to make a lot of money have a chance to build a great business in the social network marketing world.

Well, wait no more because PeopleString gives you this opportunity.� Best off all the PeopleString social portal already integrates with Twitter and by the time you read this article it is very well likely that it will be integrated with Facebook.� What this means is that you can send messages from your PeopleString wall and your message will show up on your Facebook and Twitter wall.� But now you will be getting paid because PeopleString will be sharing all of their advertising revenue with you.

Lastly PeopleString has an innovative mailbox cashbox program which eliminates the middleman and allows advertisers to advertise directly to you.� You walk to your mailbox and you get paid. You also get a percentage of the your referrals mailbox cashbox offers as well.� PeopleString also has cashback shopping and gives you a free Blackgrape energy drink store as yet another way to make money with PeopleString. So if you are not a PeopleString member yet join today and own a piece of the web! Click here to join.