

LinkedIn Posts $243M In 2010 Revenue, $15.4 Million In Net Income - joshbert
http://techcrunch.com/2011/03/11/linkedin-posts-243m-in-2010-revenue-15-4-million-in-net-income/

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JacobIrwin
My startup founder and I were recently discussing their sources of revenue.
LinkedIn goes a little lighter on ads and offsets by charging for three tier
levels of membership. For example, if you want to send X "InMails" you have to
be at X level of membership. This model is debilitating.

I watched my classmate the other day 1.) Find the person he was trying to
contact through LinkedIn 2.) Try to send them an InMail 3.) Only to find out
he had to upgrade to a paid membership to do so 4.) Copy/Paste the person's
name (from LinkedIn) into Google's search engine with the word "email" added
to the end 5.) Found their email address in the first result (via a campus
directory) 6.) Proceeded to Yahoo Mail to reach out to them.

This may not work with names like Rick Smith, but that six step process only
took him 20-30 seconds.

Would you pay $30+ to upgrade your LinkedIn account for InMail or would you
rather spend 30 seconds to Google them?

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maukdaddy
I hate LinkedIn's business model and would change in a heartbeat if there was
a decent alternative.

I feel like LinkedIn is the MySpace of professional social networking. Now
that professionals are comfortable with the concept, it's only a matter of
time until a competitor comes along and steals their business.

~~~
code_duck
MySpace, heck... it feels more like Classmates.com or Friendster to me.

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revorad
It's funny how when a company actually makes profit, TC writes a short facts-
only news story with no commentary or excitement. If it were a story of
LinkedIn getting another round of funding, they would be gushing over how it
was going to take over the world.

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ninjastar99
243 minus 15 = 227. Ummmm... what did LinkedIn spend $227 million dollars on?

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chegra
Cost of revenue 44,826

Sales and marketing 58,978

Product development 65,104

General and administrative 35,064

Depreciation and amortization 19,551

Total costs and expenses 223,523

[http://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1271024/0001193125110...](http://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1271024/000119312511064249/ds1a.htm)

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citizenkeys
The fact that we're having this discussion means LinkedIn is doing something
right. LinkedIn is under-valued because they are still the only social network
for business professionals. LinkedIn continues to make improvements to their
service. I know a lot of professionals, myself included, that use LinkedIn
regularly and don't use Facebook much at all.

Incidentally, everybody is welcome to add me to your LinkedIn:
<http://www.linkedin.com/in/citizenkeys>

