LinkedIn IPO shares rise to $92

We reported earlier that the LinkedIn IPO was priced at $45 a share for this week’s public offering. However LinkedIn shares skyrocketed even further to about $86 a share and a high of $92.99 a share with the launch of its initial public offering on Thursday morning. When shares were only $45, the company had a valuation of about $4.3 billion; today’s offering doubles that value.

LinkedIn has been Silicon Valley’s most anticipated public offering since Google, although if Facebook ever goes public, that IPO will be much more exciting. LinkedIn’s stock offering didn’t begin trading until more than 30 minutes after the New York Stock Exchange opened because officials wanted to match supply with the crazed demand for the social media networking site. We can imagine the trading floor was crazed with people just throwing their money at LinkedIn.

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CEO Jeff Weiner turned aside questions from CNBC about a potential bubble. "At the end of the day, it's not about the share price -- it's about our continuing to execute," he told the network.

Traders have been salivating while waiting for online social networks to go public; they’re still going to have to patiently wait for Facebook, Twitter and game maker Zynga to follow the lead. It does in fact make sense that LinkedIn was priced so high because it’s the first U.S. social media site to go public.