To me money pouring in from customers is much more noteworthy than money pouring in from investors.

A better headline would be "Linked in: the equity keeps trickling out".

To make themselves feel better I think they call it a "balanced round".

They say they've been profitable since 2006, but why are they still taking money?

You can be profitable and still need to raise money to expand more rapidly.

Agreed. Which easily explains their first couple of fund raising events. But they've been profitable (according to themselves, of course) for over 2 years.

Something weird is going on. I honestly don't think they're profitable.

What's everyone think of this? At this point they pretty much have to go public right?

A $2 or $3 billion (or more) acquisition isn't very likely and anything less than that would be unacceptable to their investors. I've heard some nasty things about LinkedIN, but it was all from indirect soruces.

Did anyone on HN ever work there or know someone who did?

I agree that they basically would have to go public. Who would want to buy them for a couple of billion dollars when MySpace is looking like a bad investment at 500 million?

I thought their valuation last round sounded awful high, but I don't know very much about their business. Raising yet another round of funds seems like a sign of trouble.

What makes you think that MySpace was a bad deal at 500mil. They have $800mil in revenue, all the recent valuations have placed it's value in the 5-10 billion range. Even with the dip in the ad market it's still a very valuable property.

Any number of business information companies would be potential buyers (e.g Thomson-Reuters, Reed Elsevier, Bloomberg) they all have complementry products and the finances to be able to afford such a deal.