LinkedIn Expands in China With Local Website

LinkedIn Corp. (LNKD) is introducing a Chinese-language website that will restrict some content to adhere to state censorship rules, expanding in a country where U.S. technology companies have clashed with the government.

The Mountain View, California-based professional social-networking company is offering a new version to provide a more localized service after more than a decade of having an English-language site there, Derek Shen, LinkedIns China president, said in a blog post yesterday. LinkedIn is also creating a joint venture with Sequoia China and China Broadband Capital to connect more than 140 million Chinese professionals, he wrote. LinkedIn said it has more than four million members in China, which is one of the companys fastest-growing user bases.

The new website puts LinkedIn deeper into a country where social-media peers such as Twitter Inc. and Facebook Inc. are blocked after they balked at government censorship rules. Facebook hasnt built up operations in China beyond hiring contractors to help advertisers reach people outside of the country, spokeswoman Debbie Frost has said. Google ran afoul of Chinese authorities in 2010 for refusing to abide by local censorship requirements, leading to the company shutting its unfiltered search tools there and redirecting users to pages in Hong Kong.

The LinkedIn Corp. homepage and logo are displayed on laptop computers arranged for a... Read More

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The LinkedIn Corp. homepage and logo are displayed on laptop computers arranged for a photograph in Washington, D.C.

The shares of LinkedIn rose 5.1 percent to $209.84 at the close in New York, leaving them up 31 percent in the past 12 months, compared with a 22 percent climb in the Standard & Poors 500 index.

LinkedIn Chief Executive Officer Jeff Weiner vowed to be transparent about how the company conducts business in China and said he will undertake extensive measures to protect member data.

LinkedIn strongly supports freedom of expression and fundamentally disagrees with government censorship, Weiner said in a LinkedIn post. At the same time, we also believe that LinkedIns absence in China would deny Chinese professionals a means to connect with others on our global platform, thereby limiting the ability of individual Chinese citizens to pursue and realize the economic opportunities, dreams and rights most important to them.

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LinkedIn Expands in China With Local Website