Rumors are flying that News Corp., fresh off its acquistion of Dow Jones, wants to marry the business persons’ newspaper to LinkedIn, the soc net for suits. Apparently, Rupe is willing to pay nearly double the sum he shelled out for MySpace.
But get this…according to Wired, Dan Nye, CEO of LinkedIn said it would take “a lot more” than a billion dollars for the company to sell out.
It’s hypothetical and incredibly speculative, but suppose LinkedIn truly does, as it projects, grow annual revenue to between $75 million and $100 million next year. Under what circumstances could News Corp. justify a billion-dollar-plus valuation on the company? You can’t really compare LinkedIn to Facebook, given that Facebook’s $15 billion valuation was probably more driven by Microsoft’s desperation and obsessive fear of failure on the web than it was by the fundamental value of the property.
“It’s all bulls*%t,” says Global Equities Research analyst Trip Chowdhry. “The market has to come to some realization that LinkedIn just has a bunch of email addresses. I don’t think News Corp. is a sophisticated buyer. The company should be worth 1.5 times revenue and that’s it.”
This news comes as I once again ask myself what good MyFaceSpace is to me personally. Only a handful of my real friends and business contacts use these sites. I’ve had a headhunter or two reach out via LinkedIn, but they could just as easily have found me here. If I didn’t have AdPulp to showcase my thinking, then maybe I would need MyFaceSpace. Although, I doubt it.
