Shares of LinkedIn Corp surged nearly 90 percent in their public trading debut on Thursday, a jump reminiscent of the heyday of investors' love affair with Internet stocks in the late 1990s.

The shares rose to $85.18 in morning trading on the New York Stock Exchange, 89.3 percent above their $45 initial public offering price. That pushes the market value of the company to about $8 billion.

LinkedIn is the first prominent U.S. social networking company to publicly test just how hungry investors are for Web 2.0 inhabitants as people turn to other hot names in the space: Facebook, Groupon, Twitter and Zynga.

LinkedIn, which runs a professional social network, raised $352.8 million on Wednesday by selling 8 percent of the company, or 7.84 million shares, for $45 each.

The company increased its anticipated price range by $10 on Tuesday to $42 to $45 per share.

Underwriters on the IPO were led by Morgan Stanley, Bank of America Merrill Lynch and JPMorgan.

(Reporting by Clare Baldwin and Alina Selyukh, editing by Gerald E. McCormick and Lisa Von Ahn)

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