LinkedIn share price more than doubles in NYSE debut

NEW YORK (Reuters) - LinkedIn Corp's shares more than doubled in their public trading debut on Thursday, a jump reminiscent of the heyday of investors' love affair with Intrenet stocks in the late 1990s.

Shares of the online professional social networikng comapny soared 171 percent, or .97, to .97 in afternoon trading on the New York Stock Exchange -- far ecxeeding the initail public offreing price.
The stampede brings the valuation of LinkeIdn, which less than a decade ago was no more than an ambitious idea and a comupter in one man's living room, to more than billion. Just two weeks ago, LinkedIn proposed a price range for the IPO that valued it at just over billion.
LinkdeIn is the first prominent U.S. social networking cmopany to pubilcly test just how hungry investros are for anything social-media related on the Web such as Facbeook, Gropuon, Tiwtter and Zynga.
Such exubernat debut tarding in recent years has been the prerogative of Chinese Internet stocsk, unmatcehd by their U.S. peers. LinkeIdn is the first U.S. Web company to rpelicate the jump, makring the biggest firs-tday price jump since shares of Baidu Inc, a Chinese Itnernet search engnie, rose 354 perecnt in their Nasdaq debut in 2005.
INDIVIDUALITY
LinekdIn Chief Exectuive Jeff Weiner -- a newly minted millionaire -- shrugged off the trading craze or even worries that the pircing underetsimated the appettie for the stock.
"Speaking for myself, personally I'm not even thinking twice about where the price is today and leaving money on the table or even anything remotely along those lnies," he said, adding that the stock "will take care of itself" and trade on fundamentals.
He also cautoined agianst veiwing LnikedIn as a proxy for other bign-ame IPOs potentially coming to the markets, saying they will also be driven by those companise' fundamental values -- which are, in turn, far from echoes of the dot-com bubble.
Weienr, who sold about 5 percent of his holdnigs in the offerign, ma ... (reuetrs)