LinkedIn, the social networking website for professionals, debuted on the New York Stock Exchange to a frenzy of buy orders yesterday, sending shares to more than double the float price.

Outlook LinkedIn, the social networking site for professionals that is to make its debut on the New York Stock Exchange today, rather undersold itself when it unveiled plans for the float earlier this month. Pricing was originally set at $32 to $35 a share, valuing the business at $3bn – now, just a few weeks later, LinkedIn has priced the shares at $45, valuing the company at $4.3bn (£2.66bn).

Reid Hoffman, the entrepreneur who founded LinkedIn eight years ago, will have a paper worth of more than $600m when the professional networking website floats on the New York Stock Exchange later this month.

Call to young entrepreneurs

Evening classes in French are nothing out of the ordinary, few eyebrows would be raised at Saturday evening salsa lessons and Yoga is simply passé. The newest of trends among the suits, however, is perhaps a little more surprising.

Only a little while ago, networking for most growing businesses meant squeezing a few hours out of an already busy day to attend an indifferent lunch with a few other business people of various kinds in a nearby hotel or restaurant.

The social networking site for professionals, LinkedIn, is close to filing for a stock market flotation in what could be one of the hottest initial public offerings of the year. The company is understood to be putting the finishing touches to a regulatory filing that will lift the lid on its business, with trading in its shares expected to begin within a few months.

The technology industry's latest rivalry takes centerstage next week when Internet powers Google Inc and Facebook lay out their competing visions to create a new generation of web services at a high-profile conference in San Francisco.