LA Times reports that professional networking site LinkedIn may file for an IPO with the SEC as early as today or this week. LinkedIn hired Morgan Stanley, Bank of America and JPMorgan Chase to lead the public offering, while the network implied a $2.5 billion value on private trading exchange SharesPost.

“LinkedIn Chief Executive Jeff Weiner ducked the question whether his company was planning to go public in a November interview. Weiner, a former Yahoo Inc. executive, joined LinkedIn in December 2008 and became CEO in June 2009.”

LinkedIn’s $2.5 billion may dwarf compared to Facebook’s $50 billion, but it may just be the first major Silicon Valley social network to go public. The news of an IPO first emerged when sources initially implied the professional networking site will file an S-1 registration statement in Q1, 2011. Nonetheless, and despite of all the hype, LinkedIn is not the only one on the web going public.

Skype, which recently launched the latest version of Skype for Mac, also postponed its plans for an IPO until the second half of 2011, reportedly due to an uncertain market and a recent appointment of a new CEO, Tony Bates.  Online publisher Demand Media also  launched its IPO this week, with 4,500,000 shares estimated between $14.00 and $16.00 each. This attracted some scrutiny from the SEC, similarly to Facebook, which in turn may hold back on its public offering due to that very factor.