LinkedIn Corp's shares more than doubled to $103.00 in their public trading debut on Thursday, a jump reminiscent of the heyday of investors' love affair with Internet stocks in the late 1990s. The shares soared 128 percent, or $58.64, to $103.90 in late morning trading on the New York Stock Exchange - far exceeding the $45 initial public offering price.
The stampede for the stock brings the valuation of LinkedIn - which less than a decade ago was no more than an ambitious idea and a computer in one guy's living room - to more than $8 billion. LinkedIn is the first prominent US social networking company to publicly test just how hungry investors are for anything social-media related on the Web such as Facebook, Groupon, Twitter and Zynga.