In an article this week at the New York Times, they discussed where LinkedIn is going in the future, and how it got to its current position on the social networking market. On Wednesday, it was announced that LinkedIn is currently valued at $1 billion. On Wednesday, there was a $53 million investment from Bain Capitol Ventures. To put this in perspective, the NYT pointed out that when MySpace was purchased by NewsCorp, it was worth $580 million, and Facebook was valued $15 billion when Microsoft purchased a share of the social networking site. The corporation is currently private, and hopes to stay that way.

How does LinkedIn keep pulling in the money? Currently, only one-fourth of its projected $100 million is from ads. What are the other ways it keeps the revenue streaming in? It offers premium subscriptions where users have more flexibility with their actions, it offers premium subscriptions, and it also offers recruiting tools for businesses.

It also has a few plans for its future. It will soon offer a group company function. Everyone who works at a company will be automatically pulled into a group, therefore fostering an easier way for everyone to communicate with one another. They also plan to add a calendar function and allow independent developers to build programs that allow for collaboration.

Update: We have updated this post. Microsoft owns a share of the social networking site Facebook, which it's value was $15 billion at the time of valuation. LinkedIn is valued at $1 billion. We apologize for the errors.