Might LinkedIn's business be counter-cyclical?

People are going to be 'networking' most intensely when they don't have a job or are worried about their current job. If there are fewer people looking for a job and those people get pulled out of the market more quickly, there's less money to be made from them.

LinkedIn is not likely to make money out of job seekers. Their fastest growing income stream is LinkedIn Corporation Solutions. I'd assume that headhunting is harder during good times, thus I think they are more cyclical than counter-cyclical.

No. It's a-cyclical...even better.

I'll tell you what happens. Recruiters and third parties sign up in droves for the sole purpose to spam the userbase, which ultimately drives members away from the site.

LinkedIn earned their 100 million users by providing a professional networking platform where the users could choose who they network with. When the userbase has less of a choice regarding who contacts them, they'll abandon linkedIn as fast as a teenager terminating his MySpace account.

Recruiters and third parties have already signed up. Everyone uses it. That's the point.

If that is the case, then where is the revenue growth going to come from?

New market segments.

LinkedIn is incredibly successful in IT related markets, mostly in the US.

It's like when Amazon started, it was very successful selling to people involved with the internet in some professional capacity.

Isn't "make" usually used to describe income (profit) rather than revenue?