ASOCIATED PRESS -- Mar 9 -- Reid Hoffman, co-founder and chairman of LinkedIn, said the company will probably file for an initial public offering of stock before 2010. Former LinkedIn executive, Keith Rabois, believes Hoffman needs to pursue an IPO as soon as possible to create a bigger buzz about the service. About 18M people now have profiles on the site, roughly twice as many as a year ago and more than 1M people joining LinkedIn each month. The projected 2008 revenue is $75M to $100M.

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Linked in should be the 900 Pound Guerilla of Business Social Networking. They are charging USD $200 per month for membership. People are paying for annual memberships of USD $2000.

Compare this to online dating: $20 per month, with the average customer lasting 3-4 months. ($60-80 in revenue).

In one month, Linkedin makes ten times what an online dating site does with one customer. In one month, Linked In makes the equivalent of 3 customer's lifetime revenue from online personals.

The reason why I mention online personals is it is a highly profitable social networking business and a good comparison tool.

Most casual social networking sites are solely relying on Ad revenue (a huge error of judgement in my mind). If a site can bring members to pay for it, that this a good step in the way of a business with recurring revenue.

Business social networking will certainly dominate the market in terms of dollars generated.

Looking forward to seeing everyone in San Francisco on this one :-)

Marc Lesnick
Conference Organizer
Social Networking Conference
July 10-11, 2008
Mission Bay Conference Center at UCSB
San Francisco