LinkedIn, WeChat planning closer cooperation

After launching a Chinese-language website in February, the Chinese branch of the world's largest professional networking company LinkedIn Corp is set to strengthen its cooperation with reigning mobile messaging application WeChat.

Derek Shen, president of LinkedIn China, said on Thursday that the professional networking site with more than 300 million members globally expects to roll out a service that can tie LinkedIn users' accounts to the ones they have on WeChat.

Shen, who joined the United States-based LinkedIn in January to assist the Internet giant in tapping China's professional networking market, declined to give a detailed description of the cooperation.

But he said his Beijing-based team is considering the possibility of allowing WeChat's more than 500 million users in China to log onto LinkedIn through their WeChat accounts or even communicate with LinkedIn users on WeChat rather than the traditional way of sending messages to users' registered email addresses.

"People have two identities. One is about their personal life; the other is about their professional life. WeChat has done a great job of enriching people's private lives. But the cooperation with LinkedIn can help its users build their professional identities," he said.

LinkedIn has made China one of its top priorities by creating a joint venture with Sequoia China and China Broadband Capital in January in an attempt to connect with more than 140 million Chinese professionals.

Compared with January, the number of LinkedIn's daily new users jumped 80 percent in July. The company reported that its Chinese users exceeded 5 million by the end of May.

Nearly 1 million of them use LinkedIn's Chinese language website, which was launched at the end of February.

Shen said he was satisfied with LinkedIn China's track record in its first six months in China and is hoping to boost Chinese user numbers to 10 million by early next year.

The push will not be through advertisements, however; rather, LinkedIn is planning to launch creative campaigns, including holding offline seminars jointly with top universities or MBA programs, to attract the attention of high-quality talent in China's biggest cities.

Statistics from LinkedIn showed that more than 60 percent of its users live in Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and Shenzhen. In addition, 42 percent of its users hold manager-level positions or above.

As a newcomer to China, LinkedIn is also planning to meet with some of the well-established players in China's professional networking market.

Tianji.com, a Beijing-based platform, boasts more than 18 million users. Founded in 2005, it said its user numbers have soared by an average of 500,000 per month over the past year.

He Miao, marketing director of Tianji.com, said that as the market matures, more and more Chinese are realizing they need a separate platform to meet the demands of building a career.

The key to running a successful professional networking system in China lies in localization, she said.

"People in the West are more open to contacting strangers online and exploring business opportunities through online connections, even if they don't know each other well," He said.

Chinese Internet users seldom contact those they do not know well. "They have to become friends first before doing business together. So we have to specially design products and features to improve the interaction and make them know each other better through our platform," she said.

Jin Xiaolei, an analyst with Beijing-based Internet consultancy Analysys International, said that teaming up with WeChat is a smart move for LinkedIn as more and more people have used the mobile messaging application as a tool for communicating work-related information.

"But digging deeper and meeting the demands of Chinese users requires a long-term commitment. It is still too early to tell what LinkedIn's future in China will be," she said.

"But what is sure is that the Chinese professional networking market is going to heat up, with LinkedIn serving as a good catalyst."