Article By: Joshua Russak (Red@aclion.com)

Everywhere I look, everyone is saying the same thing: LinkedIn raises $53 million in VC funding...and that's great to know. This is their 4th round of VC Funding and THEIR LARGEST! According to the reliable blog-source "Alley Insider", in the article LinkedIn CEO: Yep, We Want To Go Public they are considering going public in the near future! This is all great news for LinkedIn. ...But what about the fact it was down this morning? Maybe it was our computers, but for a company valued at about $1Billion, there's no excuses.

Anyways, the point here is, if this company goes public, I'm curious to see who's willing to invest. This is a company to keep your eye on in the coming months. "While its traffic is far below the two social-networking leaders, LinkedIn is seeing strong growth. April traffic was up more than 360% from the same period last year, compared with a 56% gain at Facebook and only 3% in gains at MySpace, according to Nielsen data." (source)

The company's revenue model depends on advertising, subscriptions, job listings and providing recruitment services (though, in all fairness, I do not recommend them for the smaller recruitment agencies). The company said it is in the process of launching "several new lines of business", and though I'm not sure that is, I can bet my money that widgets and mobile will play a key factor there.

...oh, and I'm proud to say I've successfully signed on to LinkedIn at this point! Check out my profile here. Now if you'll excuse me, it's time to accept some more "business contacts".