LinkedIn has sent the tech world in a flurry since their initial public offering yesterday blew all expectations out of the water. LinkedIn announced its pricing at $5 per share, but by the end of trading yesterday it had reached …

LinkedIn has exceeded all expectations with its initial public offering today, which has been deemed the biggest web IPO since Google’s. Pretty impressive for a social network that isn’t Facebook. When the company announced its pricing for the IPO, it …

The nifty career-based social networking site LinkedIn announced its decision to go public, and the reaction on the first day of the company being traded has been fantastic. Initially, the service’s stocks were priced around $45 a share, but after …

LinkedIn is expected to launch its IPO on Thursday to the tune of 7,840,000 shares of class A common stock. The company said in an SEC filing that it expects shares to sell for $42 – $45. The filing says: …

It looks like professional social network LinkedIn will open in public markets this Thursday. Rumors of an IPO have been floating around since the beginning of the year. LinkedIn will mark the first major U.S. social network to go public, …

LinkedIn announced the launch of a new platform today that some are likening to Facebook’s huge rollout of the open graph (which included integration and social plugins all over the web). “With this release, we’re including a powerful set of …

Newspapers have proven to be surprisingly resilient on many college campuses.  There’s almost always a school paper, for example, and different groups of students are drawn to other publications.  But in a real victory for LinkedIn, its professional network has …

Microsoft announced added support for its “Active View” functionality in Hotmail, for LinkedIn, Netflix, Posterous, and LivingSocial. In a nutshell, this means you can now interact with each of these services as if you were on their respective sites, without …

Although it’s rather early for champagne, the people behind professional networking site LinkedIn have reason to celebrate this morning.  LinkedIn CEO Jeff Weiner announced today that the site’s reached a major milestone, having converted 100 million professionals into members. That’s …

Smartphones may be omnipresent in college classrooms and certain offices, but the reality is that many, many people still own more basic devices.  So LinkedIn, which used to take some pride in the fact that the average member’s income was …

LinkedIn has launched a new social news product designed to let users see the top news in the fields they are interested in, as shared by those in said fields. It’s called LinkedIn Today. The three basic selling points of …

LinkedIn announced the launch of a new targeted email feature for users seeking jobs. LinkedIn members who view jobs on the service will receive recommendations automatically via email. 

The feature is powered by LinkedIn’s "Jobs You May Be Interested In" system, and the emails include results that are personalized based on the user’s profile. 

LinkedIn announced a new product today called LinkedIn Skills, which is designed to show areas of expertise, and who has the skills in these areas. 

Update: From the LinkedIn blog:

LinkedIn Corporation announced today that it has filed a registration statement with the Securities and Exchange Commission for a proposed initial public offering of its Class A common stock. The number of shares to be offered and the price range for the offering have not yet been determined. A portion of the shares will be issued and sold by LinkedIn, and a portion will be sold by certain stockholders of LinkedIn.

LinkedIn has launched a new LinkedIn Labs product called InMaps, which shows you what your network looks like in a visual way. 

Ahead of an IPO that may (or may not) take place this year, privately traded shares of LinkedIn are beginning to soar in value.  New rumors indicate that share prices make the professional networking company worth about $3 billion.

Let’s be honest: however content most people are with their jobs, Fortune’s "100 Best Companies to Work For" list can elicit envy.  So LinkedIn and CNNMoney may be onto something, as they’ve partnered to point people who read the list towards individuals who work at the top companies.

This marks the first implementation of LinkedIn’s Company Insider widget, which would be quite significant on its own.  It doesn’t hurt that big names like CNNMoney (which acts as the online home of Fortune) and Fortune are involved, either.

Boards of directors tend to stay in the background at most companies; when it comes to people, you’re much more likely to hear about the CEO, a VP of something or other, or even some hotshot engineer.  But LinkedIn’s board has a new member this morning, and Michael Moritz brings a lot to the table.

Educated at Oxford, Moritz has previously served on the boards of directors at Google, PayPal, and Yahoo.  He’s on five other boards right now, too, and also acts as a managing partner at Sequoia Capital.

By all accounts, private shares of Facebook are incredibly popular, with wealthy investors causing a virtual stampede over who will get to buy them through Goldman Sachs.  It’s a good bet that there will be widespread interest if/when Facebook goes public, too.  So to avoid being overshadowed, LinkedIn may IPO this year.

Don’t look for employees at these companies to break out shredders – or even break a sweat – quite yet, but the Securities and Exchange Commission might be curious about certain details related to Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, and Zynga.  Unconfirmed rumors indicate the SEC is looking into their privately traded stock.

If you work in PR, chances are you have one of three needs:

* A need to build or grow your network.

* A need to acquire new skills or hone existing ones.

* A need to find a new job.

While you could argue many social networks meet these three needs adequately, I might argue that LinkedIn has the biggest potential to meet these needs best when it comes to professional skill-building, networking and job-seeking.

But, are folks capitalizing on that opportunity within LinkedIn now? Not so much.