Renren Inc has teamed up with zhaopin.com to launch a professional network platform. Liu Junfeng / for China Daily

Rising investor interest, low costs may spur growth

Social networking media may very well shape the face of future job hunting in China as investors make a beeline for professional networking companies in the country with the most Internet users in the world.

Renren Inc, a leading social networking company, recently teamed up with zhaopin.com, a leading job-hunting website, to launch a professional networking platform called jingwei.com.

Despite owning renren.com, one of the biggest social networking websites in China with over 100 million users, Chen Yizhou, chief executive officer of Renren Inc, says that jingwei.com will cater more to professional needs.

"Keeping in touch with your friends and building up career connections are two different things," Chen says.

The website which aims to connect with white-collar workers aged between 25 and 45 is currently undergoing testing and is not open to the public yet.

In its introduction, jingwei.com says that by sharing education background and work experience, and by exchanging information with fellow professionals, the website can help people build their careers.

Renren Inc is not the only company betting big on the potential of China's professional networking industry. Ushi.cn, another professional network, announced its official launch in October 2010 after attracting 60,000 registered members during its eight-month trial operation.

You Tianyu, an analyst with iResearch, a consulting group focusing on China's Internet industry, says he has seen an increasing interest for professional networking industry in China from investors. You says that part of the surge stems from the resounding success of US-based LinkedIn, the world's largest professional network on the Internet.

LinkedIn, with more than 100 million members in over 200 countries and regions, raked in $243 million (170 million euros) as revenue in 2010, about 102 percent more than in 2009.

You says LinkedIn's success lies largely in its relatively lower costs, compared with traditional job-hunting and recruitment sites.

Despite the lower cost, professional networks have not gathered momentum in China where traditional platforms like job fairs, job-hunting websites and headhunters continue to hold sway.

According to iResearch, there are less than 10 professional networking platforms of various sizes in China, covering around 10 million registered members. That is relatively small, given that China has over 400 million Internet users.

Lin Tinghan, chief executive of tianji.com, a leading professional network platform in China with nearly 6 million registered users, says professional networking sites in China cannot simply ape LinkedIn, as there are inherent differences between American and Chinese Internet users.

"People in the West are more open to contact strangers online and explore business opportunities through online connections, even if they don't know each other well," Lin says.

Chinese Internet users seldom contact those they don't know well. "They have to become friends first before doing business together. So we have to specially design products and features to improve the interaction and make them know each other better through our platform," he says.

More than half of LinkedIn's revenue is generated from premium membership and recruiters. "But in China most of the revenue generated by professional networks and other social networking systems (SNS) is from advertising," says Dong Xu, an analyst with domestic research firm Analysys International, adding that Chinese SNS users are not used to paying for services.

Despite the hurdles, Dong still sees a promising future for China's professional network as it can provide information that traditional recruiting channels cannot offer.

"Through professional networks, people get more information about their recruiters and vice versa," she says, adding the niche market will grow rapidly once the demand picks up.

Lin of tianji.com has already witnessed an increasing demand as the membership has been growing rapidly in recent months.

"By the end of 2010, we had about 100,000 new members each month. Currently, the number is around 180,000," says Lin.

"The most important part of creating a successful professional network is to attract enough high quality users," says Lin. Some of his registered users are from elite universities, such as Peking University and Tsinghua University, Lin says.

"With more companies venturing into this industry, the resulting intense competition will further boost the development of the sector," he says.