All products featured on WIRED are independently selected by our editors. However, we may receive compensation from retailers and/or from purchases of products through these links.
As rumors swirl of possible talks between professional social networking site LinkedIn and News Corp., Dan Nye, the LinkedIn guy, did little to quiet the chatter when he told Fortune's Adam Lashinsky that it would take "a lot more" than a billion dollars for the company to sell out.
Just to clarify: Nye, who joined the company as CEO in February, said he understood the goal was to "go long" when he took the job.
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."
LinkedIn wasn't immediately available for comment.
Photo: LinkedIn
