Murdoch eyes Linkedin

SUITS' PLAYGROUND Linkedin with more than 12 million users claims they are a fast-growing professional networking site. Rupert Murdock's News Corp is an international media conglomerate which owns among other techy companies, Myspace - another social networking enterprise, Photobucket, Flektor, Directv, BskyB, NY Times, Wall Street Journal, and all the Fox Broadcasting stuff.

So what does News Corp want with another social networking site? Linkedin is business oriented rather than aimed at a younger audience. Murdoch was really smart to buy Myspace when it was ‘just’ $580 million in 2005, long before the billions associated with Facebook.

Linkedin, is a private company founded in 2003 by PayPal veteran Reid Hoffman, is enjoying its own growth spurt—15 million members, twice the number of a year ago—and, with its combination of premium memberships (a fee-based superuser scheme), advertising and corporate deals (which encourage participation among employees), is making a profit.

Let us not forget newspaper advertising revenue dropped over seven per cent in the third quarter of this year. Meanwhile the online ads revenue leapt by more than 41 per cent in 2006. Murdock owns a lot of old print style organizations. There is also the fact when Murdock was talking about buying the WSJ, the NY Times stopped charging for reading their columnist and editorials online. There are lots of rumours about Murdock & WSJ joining the free online newspaper stampede. Thus, it makes a lot of financial sense for Murdock to buy Linkedin.

In January 2007 Linkedin, which has been profitable since March 2006, announced a $12.8 million round of financing led by Bessemer and the European Founders Fund, bringing the total raised since launch to $26 million. The company had something over $10 million in revenue in 2006, and said they are doing more than that this year.

This week chairman and founder Reid Hoffman was in London to speak at Mediatech and an Oxford University event. Care to bet he 'found' time to drop by and visit News Corp executives in London Town. µ