LinkedIn CEO: This Is Not The Start Of Another Tech Bubble

Whispers of another tech bubble deriving from LinkedIn's Initial Public Offering should be dismissed says the CEO of the business social networking company.

LinkedIn's IPO has gotten off to an impressive start, with its shares doubling from its initial share price of $45. The shares have reached an apex of $93.94 (press time). LinkedIn has thus far offered 7.84 million shares and counting, making it the highest IPO for a tech company since Google's famous opening day in 2004. However, the high price has many wondering if this is the start of a new tech bubble, where companies' stocks are valued much higher than their real worth.

After all, LinkedIn's revenue this past year was a mere $243 million, with the company only turning a $15 million profit. Furthermore, even though LinkedIn has an impressive user base of 100 million, it is actually expected to lose money in 2012 while it attempts to grow.

Jeff Weiner, chief executive officer of LinkedIn, would have none of the bubble talk. He said the situation now is a lot different than it was back then.

Social networks are clearly here to stay, Weiner said to CNBC this morning. The fundamentals of this group of companies are very different from late 90s and early 2000.

While on CNBC, Weiner also cautioned investors and analysts to not read too much into the high share price. He said at the end of the day it's not about the share price, it's about LinkedIn executing its fundamentals.

David Menlow, analyst at IPO Financial, told The Daily Beast that he thinks LinkedIn is overvalued. He said people paying top price for LinkedIn will need to be put on suicide watch. The high price, he says, is due to the social media hype.

The mentality that's out there is, 'We can't get into Facebook, we can't get into Twitter or Groupon or whatever, so we'll pay whatever it takes to get into this uncorrelated proxy for those offerings, Menlow said to The Daily Beast.

Back in the late 1990s into the early 2000s, successful online tech companies were all going public and getting high valuations without actually having a promising revenue stream. Naturally the bubble burst, many of the companies went bust and the stock market reacted negatively.

Follow Gabriel Perna on Twitter at @GabrielSPerna