Microsoft announced Thursday it’s shutting down LinkedIn China and will launch a new China-only standalone product called InJobs later this year.

Details:

"...We’ve made the decision to sunset the current localized version of LinkedIn, which is how people in China access LinkedIn’s global social media platform," LinkedIn wrote in its blog post announcing the move.

"Our new strategy for China is to put our focus on helping China-based professionals find jobs in China and Chinese companies find quality candidates...We will also continue to work with Chinese businesses to help them create economic opportunity," said the company. 

According to the post, the new recruiting platform InJobs, which is set to be rolled out later this year, will not include a social feed or the ability to share posts or articles. 

Context:

LinkedIn was launched in China in 2014 with limited features to meet local regulations and laws, and it now has more than 45 million users in the country. Microsoft, which came to China in 1992 and opened the largest R&D center outside the US in the country, acquired LinkedIn for $26.2 billion in 2016.

As more and more companies begin to search for their talents through various channels, the online recruiting market has been growing in the past few years in China. According to Statista, the size of the online recruiting market in China was estimated to generate a revenue of around 14.8 billion yuan ($2.30 billion) in 2023.