Your Web News in One Place

Help Webnuz

Referal links:

Sign up for GreenGeeks web hosting
February 25, 2014 05:00 am GMT

LinkedIn Goes East For Growth, Opens Its First Site In China, , Teams Up With Sequoia And CBC

china townBig international news today for LinkedIn, the social media site for professionals to network with each other: the company is launching its first official site in China — in Simplified Chinese, in beta. Derek Shen, president of China for LinkedIn, notes in a blog post that the site will be branded “” and will aim to offer more localized content for Chinese-speaking users. LinkedIn is not starting from zero: the company already has some four million registered users in the country from some 80,000 different companies, although they all currently only use an English language site that has been accessible in the country for over 10 years already. The state of affairs, Shen notes, is one of LinkedIn still in a “start-up phase” in the country. And this new venture will not be forged alone: Shen says that LinkedIn has established a joint venture with Sequoia China and CBC “to explore expanding our business here.” This potentially means not just how the the site itself will grow, but could include the launch of new services and potential investments into local companies that can help LinkedIn develop more localised services. Some of those local tweaks are already a part of the site: social platforms Sina and Tencent are already integrated — meaning users can link up their accounts on these to cross post with LinkedIn; users can import contacts from Weibo. Users of WeChat can also link their accounts to share content. For a company of 277 milion users that has been criticised of late for slowing growth, the move is significant: China represents an opportunity of some 140 million professionals, or one in five of all knowledge workers globally, according to LinkedIn CEO Jeff Weiner. And given how strong the GDP is growing in China — currently the world’s second-fastest — the number of potential users is sure to go up. “Given the rapid acceleration and development of China’s economy, the expansion of our offering in China marks a significant step forward in our mission to connect the world’s professionals to make them more productive and successful,” Weiner writes in a blog post. While a move into China will help the company tap into a rapidly expanding base of new users, it will not be without its challenges. Weiner notes that the decision to move into China is one that the company has been weighing up for a while, balancing

Original Link: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/F8ux35bxiHw/

Share this article:    Share on Facebook
View Full Article

Techcrunch

TechCrunch is a leading technology blog, dedicated to obsessively profiling startups, reviewing new Internet products, and breaking tech news.

More About this Source Visit Techcrunch