LinkedIn valued at $1 billion

Meanwhile, Facebook's attempts to leverage its users' interactions on the site to sell more and better targeted advertising have met with mixed results. In particular, its Beacon program got the company into a strident privacy controversy and led top officials to acknowledge the program could have been better designed.

One of the biggest stumbling blocks for selling advertising on social-networking sites remains companies' reluctance to promote their products in pages that are created by millions of individuals and that can feature content of an objectionable nature. Another problem: it seems that people aren't primarily interested in paying attention to ads when they're in social-networking sites.

It can be argued that these concerns may be lessened at a site like LinkedIn, due to its focus and to the type of interactions its users engage in.

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