LinkedIn is one of the very few big US tech companies that were still operating in China. LinkedIn’s local version of service in China will be shut down.
This career networking social media platform is owned by Microsoft. Mohak Shroff, who’s the senior vice president of engineering at LinkedIn, said in a blog post on Thursday that this decision was taken because of a “significantly more challenging operating environment and greater compliance requirements in China.”
The company is replacing the platform with a new platform called InJobs by the end of this year. InJobs will be a China-only portal which “won’t include a social feed or the ability to share posts or articles” but will simply serve as a portal to list and apply for jobs.
“While we’ve found success in helping Chinese members find jobs and economic opportunity, we have not found that same level of success in the more social aspects of sharing and staying informed,” Shroff said.
For private companies, it has always been challenging to operate in China but the screws have tightened over the past few years due to Chinese President Xo Jinping. In recent months, a sweeping regulatory crackdown has wiped an estimated $3 trillion off the market value of China’s biggest firms.
LinkedIn was launched in China in the year 2014. LinkedIn had more than 45 million users in China, and it was notable because a lot of other Western Social networking sites which included Facebook, Twitter, etc have been blocked by the Chinese government’s massive censorship apparatus which is also known as the Great Firewall.
Microsoft entered China’s market in 1992 and has a long history there. The Chinese government and many companies make use of its software widely. The Bing search engine is also accessible as Google has been cut out for years now.
