Wednesday proved to be a big day for social stocks; but not necessarily in a positive way. After Twitter (TWTR) and Yelp (YELP) reported earnings on Tuesday after the bell followed by Facebook's (FB) earnings report Wednesday morning, we saw total carnage in the social media space. Unfortunately, investors simply couldn't find the positivity they were looking for in these reports. Today, we'll take a look at all three reports, discuss how the market reacted, and talk about what we can expect from LinkedIn's (LNKD) earnings.

Twitter Beats Earnings Before Upsetting With User Data

First and foremost, Twitter was one of the most watched earnings reports in the social space. While that report came in overwhelmingly positive in terms of earnings and revenue, user data weighed heavy on the stock. Here's what we saw…

• Top-Line Revenue – In terms of top-line revenue, Twitter came in well above expectations of $481 million; posting revenue of $502 million in the quarter.
• Earnings – Twitter also proved to do a great job in terms of earnings by posting $0.07 per share; almost doubling analyst expectations of $0.04 per share.
• User Data – This proved to be the big kicker. At the end of the quarter, Twitter's total of monthly active users came in at 304 million; showing growth over the previous quarter of only 2 million users. While that may seem like a great thing, in the world of social media; it's a drop in the bucket and investors know it. To make matters worse, the company's CFO, Anthony Noto warned investors that it will take a “considerable time” for the company to find its bearings in this area.

Facebook Also Declines On User Data Despite Solid Earnings

Unfortunately, Facebook didn't fare much better than Twitter. As a matter of fact, their earnings stories were incredibly similar. While the company beat analyst expectations with regard to both top-line revenue and earnings per share, a miss in daily active users caused a decline in the company's stock price. Here's what we saw…

• Top-Line Revenue – When it comes to overall revenue, Facebook did incredibly well; posting a 39% year over year increase and coming in at $4.04 billion in the quarter. Analysts expected to see Facebook's earnings come in at $3.99 billion for the quarter.
• Earnings Per Share – Facebook also beat analyst expectations of $0.47 in terms of earnings per share. The actuation figure the company reported for the quarter came in at $0.50.
• User Data – As with Twitter, Facebook's only issue appeared to be user data. Analysts expected daily active users for the quarter to come in at 970.5 million. However, Facebook's daily active users came in at 968 million. Although it was a slight miss, it is the only negative news from the earnings report and the only reasonable cause for the declines Facebook experienced on Wednesday.

Yelp Tumbles On Surprisingly Weak Guidance

When it comes to Yelp, the company is facing big issues of its own; and the issues don't revolve around users. Instead, the declines Yelp experienced revolved around weak earnings. Here's what we saw…

• Top-Line Revenue – This seemed to be the only positive piece of data in the Yelp earnings report. In the quarter, the company produced revenues of $133.9 million; slightly higher than analyst expectations of $133.5 million.
• Earnings Per Share – Unfortunately, the same wasn't true for earnings per share. In the quarter, Yelp posted a loss of $0.02 per share; twice as bad as the $0.01 per share loss analysts expected to see. For the quarter, total profits came in at only $1.3 million; less than half of the $2.7 million in profits the company generated in the same quarter last year.

How The Market Reacted

Unfortunately, Wednesday proved to be an incredibly bad day for social network investors. Here are the declines we saw as a result of the poor reports…

• Twitter – Twitter closed the trading session at $31.24 per share after a loss of 14.50%.
• Facebook – Facebook closed the trading session at $96.99 per share after a loss of around 3% in early trading following earnings and recovering for a gain of 1.70% on the day.
• Yelp – Yelp closed the trading session at $25.11 per share after the biggest loss of the day; coming in at 25.00%.

What We Can Expect To See From LinkedIn

LinkedIn is the only major player in the social network space that hasn't yet reported earnings. However, that won't be the case for long. As a matter of fact, LinkedIn is expected to report its earnings after the closing bell on Thursday, July 30th. When it comes to what we can expect, I've got mixed feelings. Here are a few key points that I think are important to keep in mind…

• Earnings History – LinkedIn has a relatively strong history of producing earnings that are higher than expectations. However, in the last quarter, the company produced a big miss. Although analysts expected a loss of $0.03, the company actually produced a loss of $0.18 per share. Nonetheless, if we average the company's strong earnings history into the equation, things still seem pretty solid for the social network.
• Other Social Network Earnings – A major concern for myself and several other investors revolves around other networks. The reality is that if you want to get a feel for how a stock is going to perform, one way to do that would be to look at reports from other companies in the sector. Unfortunately, doing so simply doesn't shine a positive light on earnings.

With that said, I'm going to stay on the bullish side of the equation and say that I'm expecting to see LNKD continue it's strong record of strong earnings. However, for the stock to react in a positive way, LinkedIn is going to also have to show incredible progress as there's already a bit of a bearish cloud hovering over the social space that's specifically associated with user data.