LinkedIn Shares More Than Double On First Day of Public Trading

For its stock market debut today, LinkedIn’s shares spiked by 109 percent to a $94.25-a-share closing price. Many analysts speculate that more social networking companies will follow the lead of the 8-year-old Mountain View-based tech giant, the first Web 2.0 company to go public this year.

Now the company is valued at $8.9 billion, a hefty jump from its 2010 revenue of $243 million and net income of $15 million. Here's what's being said about the company and its IPO today:

• Some economists have predicted that LinkedIn’s growth spurt is part of a “speculative frenzy,” asking if there’s effectively been a technology bubble akin to the one in Silicon Valley in the late 1990s. LinkedIn’s initial public offering valued the company at $4.3 billion, the largest valuation of an Internet company since Google went public in 2004. Yet many, like Charles Evans, a Federal Reserve Bank official, are remaining mum, saying it’s too early to predict the company’s direction.

• LinkedIn CEO Jeff Weiner still remains unfazed by bubble-talk, pointing out that the company will apply its new funds to investments in small acquisitions, technology and additional expansion, particularly in Europe. A sales and marketing office has already been established in London.

• LinkedIn’s growth spurt was not only good news for the company, whose employees celebrated in their Mountain View office this morning over donuts, smoothies, and coffee. The MSCI World (MXWO) Index of stocks increased by 0.3 percent by 4:45 p.m. EST, a 1.4 percent rise over the past two days. Still, there’s not an end to all market worries, as large tech companies such as Intel and Hewlett-Packard also saw their stocks drop on the same day.

• William Chandler, a retiring chief judge on many top U.S. business  courts, chose the right day to declare his new tenure at LinkedIn. He announced today that next month he will join Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati, the legal firm that advised LinkedIn on going public. Specifically, Chandler will advise the company on governing and structuring transactions.

• Despite the company’s sky-rocketing growth, it still faces financial challenges, some analysts say. While first-quarter 2011 revenues were more than double that of Q1 in 2010, the company’s income before taxes was 39.5 percent less. Sales and marketing costs were $10.1 million in 2010 versus $28.6 million in 2011.