Professional networking site LinkedIn continues its expansion in Asian countries. To make its presence stronger, it has introduced three new local languages – Â Korean,Bahasa Indonesia and Bahasa Malaysia – which will help LinkedIn to add more number of regional users. Company has introduced these languages to compete with local professional networking sites from those regions.
The launch of the local languages will better support the growing number of professionals joining LinkedIn. Local language availability often precipitates a whole new generation of LinkedIn members locally, enhancing the experience for the entire community, as said by Arvind Ranjan, MD and VP of APAC and Japan.
The major reason behind concentrating on Asian market is the large number of Internet users and more than 1 billion population. China and India -two Asian majors – alone holds 600 million together which sis the highest than any other country in the world.
Facebook’s number of users from Asian countries is enough to drag attention of LinkedIn. Two out of top three populated countries over Facebook – Indonesia and India – are from Asia alone. There combined Facebook population is around 80 million, which is 61.5 percent of LinkedIn overall users. Interestingly, India is on second position over LinkedIn in terms of overall number of users which directly shows that LinkedIn has a promising future in Asian countries.
With the addition of these new languages, users from Korea, Malaysia and Indonesia can directly switch over to their preferred local language to search or post jobs.
According to a recent post by socialbakers, LinkedIn has passed 20 million registered users in Asia and is aiming to touch 55 million milestone by the end of next year . Surprisingly, Facebook has more than 55 million users from Korea, Malaysia and Indonesia together.
Mr. Ranjan believes that LinkedIn has a ‘massive opportunities in Asian countries’ and is expected to grow further. Asian countries have proved themselves as most prominent market for other social networking site like Facebook, Twitter and Google+.
For last few years LinkedIn is trying its level best to expand its business in Asia market and took a significant step by opening Asia-Pacific Headquarter in Singapore in May and an office in Japan in October this year. However, its focus toward Chinese userbase is quite conservative as compare to other Asian countries due to strong presence of Chinese professional networking site “Tianji leads”.
In a recent update LinkedIn has revealed that near about 800,00 professionals, associated with it, are from Indonesia, 300,000 from Korea and 700,000 from Malaysia.  A combined total of such user base equals to 18,00,000, which is equivalent to 14 percent of the overall LinkedIn users approximately. So, the addition of three new languages will surely help LinkedIn to improve its overall users base.
