Microsoft has announced plans to shut down the local version of LinkedIn in china citing a operational challenges in the country.
According to Mohak Shroff, senior vice president of engineering at the career networking platform, the Chinese market is a significantly more challenging operating environment with greater compliance requirements.
Microsoft has instead made plans to roll out a new platform named InJobs this year that will be exclusive to China. The portal will not include a social feed or the ability to share posts or articles but simply serve as a platform for listing and applying for jobs.
Read also: Microsoft Reportedly Tried to Acquire Pinterest in Efforts to Push Azure Cloud Services
“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.
China has proven to be a challenging operational market particularly for private companies. Things have even been worse under the current Resident Xi Jinping.
In the last few months, the government conducted a regulatory crackdown on companies wiping off at least $3 trillion off the market value of the country’s biggest firms.
Read: 500 Million LinkedIn Users’ Personal Data Up for Sale on Hacker Site
LinkedIn has had a presence in China since 2014, attracting more than 45 million users. Other social media platforms including Facebook and Twitter are however blocked by the Chinese government’s censorship apparatus dubbed the Great Firewall.
Microsoft has a long history in China since its entry into the market in 1992. The Chinese government uses Microsoft’s technology, and allows its search engine, Bing, in the market where Google is blocked
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