Recruiting in China

LinkedIn became accessible again inside China early Friday evening after the business networking site had been blocked Thursday ? was this a technical glitch, or is this part of an ongoing adjustment to the Great Firewall? Chinese authorities never explicitly verify intentional maneuvers individually, but they have been intensely vigilant of Web 2.0 services since their inception, and every other foreign social media site that leads its market is already blocked, including Facebook, Twitter, Youtube and Foursquare.

What would be the reason to block LinkedIn? The Great Firewall has never issued a press release, but the answer is usually obvious. What may do in LinkedIn (if the block rematerializes) is the ?Jasmine Revolution,? which so far has been not a protest movement but an occasion to display the reach of China?s security apparatus and the limits placed on China?s Internet. Self-described organizers say the attempts to protest will continue with weekly Sunday strolls in cities around China.

If LinkedIn has committed a Web 2.0 crime in China?s eyes, there are a couple possibilities: the most likely issue, given Beijing?s desire to quash organizing of any form, is that there have been attempts by Jasmine organizers to reach out to others over LinkedIn, thus spreading the word via LinkedIn invitations; another issue, raised by Techrice, is the built-in ability to post to Twitter via LinkedIn, getting around the Great Firewall without the need for circumvention tools. As Techrice notes, ?being the easiest way to tweet is a lousy government relations strategy in China.?

Sensitive events are almost always the catalyst for these blocks, and though initial blocks are often temporary (as was the case with Facebook and Twitter in the past), once you are on China?s ?do not connect? list, it is hard to get off. Youtube has been blocked since the Tibet riots of March 2008; Facebook and Twitter were each blocked permanently after the Xinjiang riots of July 2009; and location-based service Foursquare has been blocked since users tried to ?check in? en masse to Tiananmen Square last year on the June 4 anniversary of the 1989 massacre of protestors.

Chinese clones of these services naturally benefit from each of these Great Firewall ?upgrades.? Youku.com, the leading online video site, IPO?d in December and is valued on the New York Stock Exchange at $3.8 billion. Renren, the leading Facebook of China with 160 million users, is expected soon to raise $500 million in a U.S. IPO. Meanwhile, Mark Zuckerberg is clearly trying to get Facebook back into China, perhaps through a joint venture with a trusted Chinese company like Baidu.

Sina Corp.?s Weibo, the dominant Chinese Twitter-like service, launched in August 2009, a month after Twitter was blocked, and is likely approaching 100 million users. Analysts disagree widely on Weibo?s value, in part due to worries about whether Beijing would shut down or severely curtail the service, but guesses range from as low as $1.5 billion to as high as $3 billion. And there is no shortage of Chinese versions of Foursquare ? including Dianping, Jiepang and a check-in service on Renren ? but you can bet none of them will be allowing users to ?check in? to the Jasmine Revolution, much less Tiananmen Square on June 4 every year.

Who will gain if LinkedIn does get blocked? (LinkedIn, as Techrice noted, did not have a Chinese-language interface, was not a huge player in the China market to begin with, and should not feel ill effects if it ends up being blocked as it looks toward an IPO). No company has yet to become ?the LinkedIn of China,? but one widely cited contender is ushi.cn. One more candidate to watch for, reports Techrice, is Jingwei, a sister company of Renren that is in beta-testing.