LinkedIn is making changes to its services offered in China. The professional networking platform’s social media functionalities will be shut down later this year, and new job listing features will be added, reshaping LinkedIn’s China service as a portal purely for recruitment.
The decision was made due to “a significantly more challenging operating environment and greater compliance requirements in China,” LinkedIn said on Thursday in an announcement. The company later posted an open letter on Weibo, saying the adjustments reflect a change in its business direction.
The company will focus on providing job matching opportunities and will no longer support content creation or interactions between users, said Jian Lu, president of LinkedIn China, in the letter.
LinkedIn’s localized service went live in February 2014 in China. For the past seven years, it was a unique professional networking platform for its users. LinkedIn is the last major foreign social media network operating in China, and many people commented on the open letter to say that the app made it possible to connect with potential employers, investors, and customers overseas.
One platform with similar functionality that was created domestically is Maimai, which allows users to anonymously participate in discussions about their employers.
LinkedIn said its new job application portal, InJobs, will launch in China later this year. InJobs will not host social feeds. Users will not be able to create or share posts.
There are already several popular domestic recruitment platforms in China, including Boss Zhipin, 51Job, and Zhilian Zhaopin.
