Business-analytics company Tableau Software (>> Tableau Software Inc) shed half its market value a day after it cut its full-year earnings guidance to between 22 cents and 35 cents a share, around half the 57 cents analysts had expected. Tableau shares closed down 49.4 percent at $41.33.

The company had cut its full-year 2016 revenue forecast to $830 million to $850 million from prior guidance of $845 million to $865 million. And Tableau's fourth-quarter revenue of $202.8 million only narrowly beat analyst expectations of $200.8 million.

"When you get a company that barely beats that has (previously) been beating by a longshot, people are going to be scratching their heads a little bit," said Brian White, an analyst at Drexel Hamilton. "If that guy can’t show much upside, what does that mean for the rest of the sector?"

Tableau's results came in tandem with poor performance from business network LinkedIn, which shocked Wall Street with a revenue forecast that fell far short of expectations. Its shares plunged 44 percent on Friday, exacerbating the rout in business-services companies.

"They're a proxy for enterprise spend," said Daniel Ives, an analyst at FBR, about LinkedIn.

Investors wondered whether enterprise customers will be willing to splurge on trends like big-data analytics and cloud computing. Those trends, hyped heavily over the years by analysts and the companies themselves, had previously driven big share-price gains.

"If you’re uncertain how much is something worth, you’re going to give the lowest bargain-basement price," said analyst Katherine Egbert at Piper Jaffray.

Companies that sell cloud-based software, meaning Internet-delivered software bought on a metered basis rather than paid for upfront, also saw particularly sharp declines.

Business-software companies Salesforce.com (>> salesforce.com, inc.) and Workday (>> Workday Inc) fell more than 10 percent each. Salesforce's 13.6 percent drop was its worst one-day loss since October of 2008.

Shares of Splunk Inc (>> Splunk Inc), a data analytics software maker, closed down 23 percent at $36.23.

Companies that help businesses update their information-technology infrastructure also took hits. Microsoft dropped 3.5 percent to $50.16, while Amazon.com Inc (>> Amazon.com, Inc.) fell 6.4 percent to $502.13.

Others taking hits included Qlik Technologies (>> Qlik Technologies Inc), Cornerstone OnDemand (>> Cornerstone OnDemand, Inc.), Hortonworks (>> Hortonworks Inc), Teradata (>> Teradata Corporation), which dropped between 8 and 17 percent. Shares of Amazon.com Inc (>> Amazon.com, Inc.) closed down 6.4 percent at $502.13.

The technology-heavy Nasdaq Composite Index shed 3.25 percent to 4363.144. The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 1.29 percent to 16,204.97.

(Reporting by Sarah McBride, Lance Tupper and Saqib Iqbal Ahmed; Editing by Dan Grebler and Meredith Mazzilli)

By Sarah McBride