LinkedIn announced earlier this week that it has launched versions of its website in Russian, Romanian and Turkish.
According to the company, the English version of the website already had 400,000 users from Russia and over 1,000 groups related to Russia, reported ComNews.ru, a website covering IT and telecom issues.
The IT and telecom sectors provide the largest number of registered Russian users, LinkedIn representatives told ComNews.ru. Among the leading Russian employers represented on the website are oil joint venture TNK BP, mobile operator MTS and search engine Yandex.
This move by LinkedIn is yet another example of a leading international Web player coming to the Russian market after years of neglect. EWDN spoke to a source in a leading Russian Internet company who said, “We approached LinkedIn two or three years ago with the idea of developing a joint venture in Russia. They declined, saying they had no interest in the Russian market.”
LinkedIn will now face strong competition from MoiKrug, a property of Yandex, which attracts 1 million unique users each month. Professionali.ru, which raised $2.5 million from a Western fund last month, has 630,000 unique users a month, ahead of E-xecutive.ru’s 370,000.
Viadeo, a global competitor of LinkedIn, has no Russian version.
LinkedIn in Russia
Sources: Traffic estimates by comScore, TNS, LiveInternet.ru; LinkedIn data provided by LinkedIn via Russian Sphinx, January 2011.
