LinkedIn Corp., a business-networking Web site, has received a $53 million infusion from blue-chip venture capitalists that values the company at $1 billion.

The investment comes as rival Facebook Inc., a site that originally targeted college students, has been attracting older users, leading to speculation that Facebook — like LinkedIn — could become a destination for professionals hoping to make new contacts, recruit employees or find experts in certain fields.

[Dan Nye]

LinkedIn was the pioneer in that concept. The Mountain View, Calif., company has more than 23 million users and added 250 new employees in the last 16 months. It drew more than 7.5 million unique visitors world-wide to its site in April, up 7.6% from March, according to the most recent figures from comScore Inc.

But Facebook has a much larger audience. Its unique visitors rose 6.6% to 116 million during the same period. The Palo Alto, Calif., company completed a funding round last year that valued the company at $15 billion.

LinkedIn lately seems to be emulating Facebook in some ways. It added a “status-update” feature to its site, similar to one on Facebook, that lets people tell their contacts where they are or what they are doing at any time. LinkedIn is also in the process of opening its site to outside software developers, something Facebook did to great fanfare last year.

LinkedIn Chief Executive Dan Nye, however, said in an interview that LinkedIn has been working on the software-developer platform “for years,” and that his company has a much-richer, more-professional user base than Facebook.

“If you’re not on LinkedIn, you’re not on a professional network,” he said.

LinkedIn’s average user is 41 years old and has a household income of $109,000, according to Mr. Nye.

Facebook said it doesn’t release specific demographic information and declined to comment. But the company’s Web site says more than half of Facebook’s users are outside college, and users aged 25 and above represent its fastest-growing demographic group.

Mr. Nye says LinkedIn has long had other types of site features now popular on social-networking sites, such as online alerts when people add new contacts or update their online profiles. Still, LinkedIn remains a more staid, business-oriented site, where people post detailed work resumes and seek recommendations about jobs; Facebook is awash in games, fan clubs and quick chat.

“There are a lot of people who have both a Facebook and a LinkedIn account,” said investor Jeffrey Glass, of Bain Capital LLC’s Bain Capital Ventures, which led the latest financing round for LinkedIn. Other investors included Sequoia Capital, Greylock Partners and Bessemer Venture Partners. But while LinkedIn “is all about productivity,” other social networks, like Facebook, are about fun, Mr. Glass said. “So I think there’s a lot of opportunity for these worlds to coexist.”

LinkedIn is profitable, Mr. Nye said, and is making money in several different ways. LinkedIn sells online ads; offers subscriptions to people who want access to more features on the site; charges for online job postings; and sells a recruiting product to big companies. The company will use the additional $53 million to pay for its expansion plans, which include moving into Europe and possibly making acquisitions, which Mr. Nye declined to detail.

LinkedIn was the subject of acquisition rumors this past fall. Reid Hoffman, a company co-founder, told the Sydney Morning Herald in January that LinkedIn had been talking to several suitors, but he declined to name them. Now, “our path is to build a strong, independent company,” Mr. Nye said.

TAKEN FROM online.wsj.com



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