<p>This week, two social network wunderkinds, Twitter and LinkedIn LinkedIn, saw their stock crash after Wall Street didn't like what it heard of quarterly earnings. Twitter, in its first earnings report as a public company, surprised investors with slowed user growth. Meanwhile, LinkedIn gave an unexpectedly cautious first quarter outlook.</p><p>The 10% stock drop for Twitter after hours on Wednesday and LinkedIn's similar fall on Thursday reflected the Street's concern about future prospects for the two young web companies in contrast to increasing optimism about Facebook's ad machine. Facebook stock is up over 17% year to date, compared to declines for the other two.</p><p>But while Twitter and LinkedIn are not running quite as smoothly as Facebook, the recent sell-off may be premature. Both companies have mitigating factors that may make up for disappointing earnings in the short term.</p><p>LinkedIn actually beat the consensus Wall Street estimates for fourth quarter revenue and EBIDTA, but its first quarter earnings projection showed an operating margin of just 23%. There's a simple explanation for that, though: the company is investing in infrastructure and other projects that will depress margins. In a conference call with investors, LinkedIn CFO Steve Sordello said the company will be spending heavily on a big build-out of its data-center capacity, and CEO Jeff Weiner pointed to plans for its Sales Solutions products aimed at helping salespeople find likely customers.</p><p><a href="http://www.forbes.com/sites/briansolomon/2014/02/07/time-to-buy-social-networks-twitter-linkedin-down-but-not-out/">Keep reading...</a></p><p>Read also:</p><p><a href="http://mashable.com/2014/02/06/twitter-stock-drop-earnings/">Twitter Stock Drops 23% as Wall Street Questions Its Mainstream Potential</a> (Mashable)</p><p><a href="http://www.marketwatch.com/story/twitters-problems-are-the-same-as-facebooks-2014-02-07">Twitter's problems are the same as Facebook's</a> (MarketWatch)</p><p><a href="http://seekingalpha.com/news/1556861-twitter-rebounds-facebook-makes-new-highs-pivotal-contrasts-the-two">Facebook Inc (FB) news: Twitter rebounds, Facebook makes new highs. Pivotal ...</a> (Seeking Alpha)</p><p>Explore: <a href="http://news.google.com/news/more?ncl=dLXOJFOxqG4dTCMdpcgddJaaezt1M&authuser=0&ned=us">109 additional articles.</a></p>