LinkedIn: $75.7 Million in Series D with Follow-on
LinkedIn, a social networking juggernaut by anyone's standards and one of the few successful social sites targeted at business users, announced today that the company had secured an additional $22.7 million in Series D funding. The investment brings its grand total for Series D to $75.7 million.
During these uncertain times for many Web companies, the investment marks a decided vote of confidence in LinkedIn's strategy. Perhaps more importantly, the admittedly "strategic" investment hints at some potential partnerships for LinkedIn in the coming months.
The follow-on funding included investments from Goldman Sachs, The McGraw-Hill Companies, SAP Ventures, and Bessemer Venture Partners.
LinkedIn CEO, Dan Nye, highlights:
"This funding strengthens LinkedIn further, and will help us to continue creating additional services for professionals to connect and collaborate more effectively, around the world."
What sorts of "additional services" might those be? It wasn't long ago that LinkedIn announced a content partnership with The New York Times. It doesn't take a drastic leap of faith to imagine a similar partnership with McGraw-Hill's BusinessWeek.
SAP brings another potential partnership to the table. ReadWriteWeb's Bernard Lunn has hypothesized that "LinkedIn could replace Outlook and SalesForce." With SAP and its suite of business tools in the mix, that hypothesis could quickly become a reality.
But those are simply educated guesses. What's certain? LinkedIn is profitable, it has money in the bank, and it just convinced some additional heavyweights to invest in its vision. And that accomplishment - especially in light of the current financial atmosphere - is not to be taken lightly.
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Interesting.
Being a top Linkedin user with over 7500 direct connections and a 4000 ppl group moderator, I think it is about time that Linkedin starts committing seriously to its user base rather than its financial health.
I had the chance to explore Xing during this week and got hooked up immediately. Had one year of free membership just importing my contacts and loved the vents, forums, groups, wants/needs and flexible interface.
I have put a lot of effort in Linkedin and I am not the only one feeling that the service is very slow to change and does not listen to its community.
Said that, I welcome http://events.linkedin.com as the chance to make the service closer to the user rather than being an ubiquitous and untouchable entity, too good to be true.
Most of my career now depends on Linkedin choices, therefore I wish all the best to the platform and hope for a better integration with its customer base.
Julius
Spot on Julius. There is actually little reason to be on LinkedIn beyond the novelty of connecting to all your former work colleagues again.
We have built WeCanDo.BIZ to broker valuable NEW connections to people you don't know, but have a need for what it is you do. This is an area where LinkedIn is very poor.
We are getting good uptake, especially amongst the SMB community where there are few reasons to join LinkedIN.
Ian Hendry
CEO, WeCanDo.BIZ
http://www.wecando.biz
"Heavyweights to invest in its vision"
Well I don have LinkedIn account I think its time to create one.
Ian/Julius: I respectfully disagree. As someone always trying to expand my network I find it invaluable for researching companies and individuals. The expansion of the group functionality has brought me in touch with local pros that I wouldn't have met without it (though not all groups are particularly useful). Last, I admit I enjoy poking around the Answers section and reading the questions/answers.
I admit that if I was well-embedded in a position and content with my network I'd probably not have much use but almost every week I have new and fresh connections there.
@Julius
"Most of my career now depends on Linkedin choice..."
You job-hop a lot, huh?
Sorry for late replies.
@James I am nt questioning the effectiveness of Linkedin, I do evangelize and have evangelised the service for years. I am just questioning the poor community management, lack of interaction with their power users and detachment from their user base. Apart from that I am a big fan and my 4hrs a day commitment is there to tesstify it.
@huh I am not really sure of what your point is. But job hop is not a choice if you consult but a necessity.