LinkedIn's new site hopes to help the company adhere to local laws

Feb 25, 2014 16:08 GMT  ·  By

LinkedIn is really hoping to get some users in China and has made a few concessions to achieve this. The company has launched a new, Chinese-language service, hoping to appease local censors.

The new site comes in addition to its usual, English-language version. It will soon also offer localized services.

“A few moments ago, LinkedIn expanded its presence in China by launching a beta version of our new Simplified Chinese site to offer a more localized service to our members in China. We also established a joint venture with Sequoia China and CBC to explore expanding our business here,” announced Derek Shen, the new LinkedIn China president.

Through this new site, LinkedIn hopes to connect over 140 million Chinese professionals with over 277 million members the platform already has at a global level.

“Our mission is to connect the world’s professionals and create greater economic opportunity – and this is a significant step towards achieving that goal,” Shen said.

The professional network has had a rather unique status in China up until now. Unlike many other English sites, LinkedIn remained unblocked in the past decade. About 4 million users from the company’s worldwide total come from China, and they work in over 80,000 local and multinational corporations, including Lenovo and Tencent.

With the new site, the company could expand at a huge rate and that’s what LinkedIn is betting on.

The Chinese site caters to the locals and provides integrated functions from other popular messaging and microblogging sites, like Sina Weibo and Tencent, including an option to import contacts.

Existing LinkedIn members from China can send invitations to their contacts and even toggle between the versions of the site.

“The launch of this beta version of LinkedIn in Simplified Chinese is part of our commitment to create locally relevant products so professionals can get even more value from LinkedIn. For example, we added local features, such as integrating Sina and Tencent into our platform so members can easily import their Weibo contacts, invite other professionals to join their networks and reach a broader audience with their status updates,” Shen states.

He added that members with WeChat accounts will be able to link both accounts, which means they’ll be able to “broaden their professional” reach more rapidly.

Since censorship is one big issue in China, LinkedIn’s CEO, Jeff Weiner, said that the company he represents supports freedom of expression and disagrees with government censorship. And while this is the company’s position towards the issue, LinkedIn believes that its absence from China would deny local professionals the chance to connect with other people at a global level.