There’s very little chance that these guys go public. This is standard bs/spin. One more thing that’s a little baffling is the wide variance in revenue estimates --- which is it, $75M or $100M?

They very well could go public.  as for the variance in revenue it is estimated to be between $75 and $100 because they are not a public company.  So they don’t have to say how much they are worth.  The estimate is probably based on subscriptions to the service, and advertising revenue.

I wouldn’t be surprised if LinkedIn’s value increases over the next 1-2 years.  They seem to be doing really well.  I have been a LinkedIn subscriber since 2006 - and I would say that what they are doing is really creating value for subscribers like me.

As an anecdotal evidence:  I actually am getting more and more “new” invitations from people who just signed up to LinkedIn - and these are people who I earlier invited a year ago.  So it must be catching up.

About the ad revenues?  Probably going to increase.  LinkedIn’s positioning as a “professional, privacy-orientated networking site that is beneficial to its users” makes it a good medium for media planners and people who get “social marketing”.  However, once they start veering away from this, I think they’d be in trouble - deep trouble.

Their value lies in their ‘unique’, strong proposition.  Once they lose that - and only they can could lose that - they’d be in deep trouble with advertising.  I would rather hear them talk about business models that go beyond “advertising”.  Because frankly, I don’t think advertising is going to be sustainable too.