Can LinkedIn Corp (LNKD) Earnings Sustain Explosive Growth?

LinkedIn has also tried to present itself as a content provider, with its Influencers product providing a forum for professionals to publish insightful essays. LinkedIn pays nothing for the content, and best of all, a lack of anonymity among commenters makes discussions much more civilized than you’ll typically see on forums where commenters don’t have their professional reputations on the line.

The question for LinkedIn is whether it can hold off competitors. Monster Worldwide, Inc. (NYSE:MWW) has finished its corporate restructuring and has been looking to sell itself, giving any prospective bidder a much cheaper way to break into the recruitment and career space. Perhaps more important, as Facebook, Twitter, and Google Inc (NASDAQ:GOOG) all look for ways to make their social offerings more relevant, they’ll each be looking at the potential to provide career-related services to bolster their profitability. Yet Google Inc (NASDAQ:GOOG) might well choose to focus more on business-to-business services, where it already has plenty of data, rather than trying to go head-on against LinkedIn’s area of strength.

In the LinkedIn Corp (NYSE:LNKD) earnings report, beware of any repeat of last quarter’s warnings about the pace of revenue growth. For a high-growth stock like LinkedIn, even apparently successful results can lead to be share-price declines if investors’ high expectations aren’t met.

The article Can LinkedIn Earnings Sustain Explosive Growth? originally appeared on Fool.com and is written by Dan Caplinger.

Fool contributor Dan Caplinger has no position in any stocks mentioned. You can follow him on Twitter @DanCaplinger. The Motley Fool recommends Facebook, Google, and LinkedIn. The Motley Fool owns shares of Facebook, Google, and LinkedIn.

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