Based in Sunnyvale, Calif., Ruckus makes both enterprise and carrier-grade Wi-Fi gear, which mobile operators use to augment their 3G and 4G mobile broadband networks. Wi-Fi has been a hot space in wireless in the last two years, as carriers look for ways to add cheap and plentiful capacity. Ruckus and its biggest competitor BelAir Networks both benefited from the trend, landing huge carrier deals to build massive outdoor Wi-Fi systems. BelAir got acquired by networking giant Ericsson, but Ruckus opted to remain independent, partnering with Ericsson’s competitors.

While the company’s initial investors sold off 1.4 million shares, its largest venture capital investor Sequoia Capital stayed all in and now owns 24 percent of the public company, BusinessWeek reported. The company’s co-founders Bill Kish and Victor Shtrom are remaining with Ruckus, serving as CTO and chief wireless architect respectively. The CEO role remains in the hands of Selina Lo, a veteran of another startup that went public Alteon Websystems.

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• How to deliver the next-generation web experience
• New solutions for the evolving mobile network
• Research In Motion: future scenarios for its fate

At its May 9 initial public offering, LinkedIn’s stock priced at $45 per share, but the shares quickly surpassed that within seconds of its market debut. For the past couple of weeks, LinkedIn’s stock price has generally hovered between $65 to $75, giving the company an average valuation of around $6.5 billion — not bad at all for a firm that made $2 million in net income on $250 million in gross revenue last year.

But some of Wall Street’s most powerful analysts think the stock should be trading at significantly higher valuations. In reports issued Tuesday, Bank of America Merrill Lynch analysts priced LinkedIn’s 12-month price target at $92 per share; UBS analysts’ 12-month price target is $90 per share; Morgan Stanley’s 12-month target is $88; and JP Morgan’s 12-month price target is $85. It bears mention that Bank of America Merrill Lynch, Morgan Stanley, and JP Morgan all acted as underwriters for LinkedIn’s IPO; however, the SEC mandates that banks maintain total separation between their equity research and investment banking operations.

The street heard the analysts’ predictions loud and clear. LinkedIn’s stock closed Monday at $76.38 per share, and on Tuesday, the price popped: The stock opened at $81.40 and jumped up to $86.03 within the first 40 minutes of trading. At 2pm EDT Tuesday, the stock was holding steady at $84.06.

Why the bullish outlook? The analysts pointed to several key factors:

• Big opportunities for user growth.
  With 100 million members, LinkedIn is far from reaching its saturation point, according to analysts. JP Morgan’s report reads, “LinkedIn’s 100 million member base implies just a 16% penetration rate of the worldwide professional market… We are projecting LinkedIn’s member base to reach more than 250 million by the end of 2015, which would suggest a 42% penetration rate off the current professional market.”

• Diversified revenue streams.
  Wall Street hates it when a company has all its eggs in one basket. All the analysts expressed satisfaction in the fact that LinkedIn gets its money from three distinct verticals: Hiring solutions (commissions on jobs sourced through LinkedIn), Marketing solutions (online ads), and premium subscriptions.

• Online advertising is poised for a boom.
  And analysts see LinkedIn as well-positioned to benefit from it. The UBS report reads: “We are bullish on the online advertising opportunity for LNKD, and note that user time spent online is disproportionate to the overall online ad spend. Roughly 28% of time is currently spent online, but the online ad spend accounts for only ~13% of the total spend, representing a roughly $50B global opportunity.”

• LinkedIn is generally destined for greatness.
  At least according to Morgan Stanley’s report, which waxed rhapsodic about the company’s potential: “Every once in a while, a company comes around that transforms an industry in such a way that investors have difficulty grasping just how big it may one day become. Amazon.com, the $85B book retailer; Google, the $150B blue link company; eBay, the $40B beanie baby company, and Netflix, the $13B DVD-by-mail company … we believe LinkedIn can be one of these companies.”

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• Facebook’s IPO filing: ideas and implications
• Social media in Q1: commerce and discovery dominated
• Flash analysis: the future of Yahoo

The suspension and delisting of Blockbuster shares comes after a failed attempt to get shareholders to agree to a reverse stock split and a combination of its Class A and Class B shares to comply with NYSE requirements. Those actions came before stockholders at its annual meeting last week, but the company failed to get a majority of shareholders to vote in favor the proposals, in part due to low voter turnout. According to Blockbuster, 49 percent of shares voted in favor of combining the stock classes and only 43 percent were cast in favor of the reverse stock split. That put Blockbuster afoul of NYSE requirements, which call for listed companies to have a share price of above $1 and a market cap of above $75 million.

The only good news that the company announced was that its debt-holders agreed to give the company a six week-extension to make good on a $42.4 million interest and principal payment against $630 million in senior secured debt that would have required Blockbuster to hand over virtually all its cash on hand. The reprieve lasts through August 13, 2010.

Blockbuster has been frantically trying to stay alive, shuttering stores and trying to conserve cash while competitors like Netflix and Redbox continue to steal market share. But despite deals with studios like Warner Bros., Sony Pictures and 20th Century Fox that give it a 28-day advantage over Netflix and Redbox on renting new release titles to its customers, the company has warned that bankruptcy is a possibility if it can’t turn around its business — and quickly.

Related content on GigaOM Pro: Slow and Steady, Netflix Pulls Ahead in Streaming Video (subscription required)

“Never write when you can talk. Never talk when you can nod. And never put anything in an e-mail.” — Eliot Spitzer, (then) Attorney General, New York State.

This is what New York Governor Eliot Spitzer had to say in late 2005, the year before he became NY governor, when I asked him for a contribution to Business2.0 magazine’s annual My Golden Rule feature, a collection of “life lessons” from admirable leaders worldwide.

Spitzer’s contribution was popular with my B2.0 editors — playing, as it did, off the raft of corporate criminal trials taking place across the country at that time (Martha Stewart, Frank Quattrone, Tyco, Worldcom, Adelphia, Enron).

Now The New York Times has broken the story that Spitzer has been linked to a high-end prostitution ring. People were expecting a resignation yesterday, bringing to a cataclysmic end what was — only a few years ago — one of the most respected legal and political careers in the country. The great irony here: Spitzer was caught in the FBI’s dragnet thanks to some taped phone calls and a few unseemly text messages authored by, none-other-than.

Irony #2: it was suspicious money transfers that led Feds to the Sheriff — they thought he was hiding bribes! Only later did they discover the money was his payments to something called the Empire Club.

As NY’s Attorney General, Spitzer rose to national fame between 1998 and 2006 for his take-no-prisoners ethics campaign to clean up Wall Street after the excesses of the dotcom boom.

It was Spitzer who, in 2002, broke the analyst-investment banker-racket that helped fuel the Internet IPO bubble, forcing a $1.4 billion settlement from a phalanx of banks including Bear Stearns, Credit Suisse First Boston, Goldman Sachs, J.P. Morgan Chase, Merrill Lynch, Morgan Stanley. He went after mutual fund brokers for market timing, NYSE chief Dick Grasso for “excessive” pay, and in 2005 he filed a civil fraud suit against AIG CEO Hank Greenberg when criminal charges wouldn’t stick. Spitzer does not believe in sacred cows.

For such feats Spitzer was dubbed the “Sheriff of Wall Street,” and became a thought-leader on ethics and good governance to business people, politicians and journalists who frequently sought his pithy commentary — of which there was plenty, until yesterday.

Here is a transcript of Gov. Spitzer’s “apology to the public,” delivered from his Manhattan office Monday. (We get it from Sewell Chan of the NYTimes):

Over the past nine years, eight as attorney general and one as governor, I’ve tried to uphold a vision of progressive politics that would rebuild New York and create opportunity for all. We vowed to bring real change to New York and that will continue. Today, I want to briefly address a private matter. I have acted in a way that violated the obligations to my family and that violates my — or any — sense of right and wrong. I apologize first, and most importantly, to my family. I apologize to the public, to whom I promised better. I do not believe that politics in the long run is about individuals. It is about ideas, the public good and doing what is best for the State of New York. But I have disappointed and failed to live up to the standard that I expected of myself. I must now dedicate some time to regain the trust of my family. I will not be taking questions. Thank you very much. I will report back to you in short order. Thank you very much.

There is so much irony in this downfall it exhausts even the most evil humor, dripping uncomfortably into tragedy. Did I mention that Spitzer prosecuted a prostitution ring in 2004?

Spitzer was unforgiving of those who transgressed, so this will get ugly. (Calls for his resignation are getting louder today.) At a FastCompany magazine event in Miami in 2003 he trumpeted the high value of pursuing criminal trials, rather than merely civil trials, for white collar wrongdoers:

“The only thing that forces [people] to change their bad behavior is shame, and by this I mean, the shame of a perp walk in front of the cameras….seeing their picture on the front page of the papers.”

Such a “corrective shaming” Spitzer is now experiencing for himself. “A private matter” he says? Not when you’re an elected official, it’s criminal behavior, and you’ve made your career off of prosecuting others for the same. Come on, this isn’t leadership. No sacred cows here, remember?

So take this as just one more cautionary tale: Power corrupts, absolutely. Do we really need to learn this over and over and over again?

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• Survey: How apps can solve photo management
• Social networks will displace business processes, not socialize them
• Sector RoadMap: Social customer service in 2013