An IPO for LinkedIn

LinkedIn CEO Jeff Weiner.

Image: Reuters

LinkedIn, the social network for professionals, followed through on its pledge to go public today as it filed the necessary paperwork with U.S. regulators for an initial public offering.

The company issued a dry, just-the-facts press release about its move. "The number of shares to be offered and the price range for the offering have not yet been determined. A portion of the shares will be issued and sold by LinkedIn, and a portion will be sold by certain stockholders of LinkedIn," the company said.

The company, started in 2002, launched the LinkedIn site in 2003, and it now boasts 90 million users. In comparison, the social-media leader Facebook has more than 500 million users. Another point to compare: LinkedIn had $161.4 million in net revenue with $1.85 million in profit in the first nine months of 2010, according to the filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Facebook had $1.2 billion in revenue in the first nine months of 2010 and $355 million in profit, a Goldman Sachs prospectus stated.

According to Reuters, LinkedIn's investors include Greylock Partners, Bessemer Venture Partners, Goldman Sachs, and Sequoia Capital, a venture capital firm that has backed Yahoo, Google, Apple, Cisco Systems, and Oracle.

Get more business intelligence from Portfolio.com:

• The Heat Is On: VentureHeat CEO Eddie Chen, 36, loves a good snowstorm. And this winter's cluster of storms is snowing millions of dollars into his heated-apparel business.
• A New Deficit Cop: Senator Kent Conrad looked around and figured “Who else is going to do it?” before volunteering to write a bill to get government’s long-term debt crisis under control.
• Keeping a Low Profile on Facebook: Facebook, the social-network site on which users share everything from their vacation photos to their Farmville addictions, is adding features that lets users put up some security gates.