What is Chinas LinkedIn?
tipped to sell shares this year or early in 2012 at a price that would value it at anything between US$50 billion and $100 billion. Chinese developers have long looked to the US for inspiration, often tweaking what they find on original American sites to allow for local conditions and interests, and sometimes then selling shares on the back of strong local revenues. Internet search company Baidu, for example, was founded in 2002, six years after Google, and listed shares on Nasdaq in August 2005, 12 months after the US search giant. Shares in both companies have since soared in value – Baidu by 47 times its IPO price (including a 1 to 10 stock split), and Google by 5.8 times. Just as Google inspired Baidu, LinkedIn, launched in spring 2003, has its imitators in China, and although the Chinese market for professional social networks is still fragmented and development slow, industry insiders believe growth will accelerate in the next two to three years. Beijing-based Tianji, founded in
