As recession looms, LinkedIn, Facebook, and Slide are taking a go-easy approach before selling shares to the publicDuring the Web's heyday, a profitable Internet company nearing $100 million in annual sales while luring a million new customers a month would have found itself on the IPO fast track. But that's hardly the case for LinkedIn, a professional networking site that has cleared those hurdles and then some.
Instead, LinkedIn is hewing closely to the Web economy's new motto on initial public offerings: Easy does it. Founded in 2003, LinkedIn may not sell shares until some time next year. Likewise, social networking site Facebook, worth $15 billion on paper, may not go public until 2010, a company board member says. People close to Facebook previously suggested an IPO could come as soon as 2009.
Meantime, fast-growing Web startup Slide, which makes popular add-on software for social networks, just banked a new round of investment capital to weather a recession that may hit before its planned IPO in 2009. "In the past, a lot of companies viewed it as their goal to go public," says Facebook Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg. "We'll do it when it makes sense for us."
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