Now to see how well Japanese embraceLinkedIn.
LinkedIn Corp. on Thursday launched its online professional networking service in Japanese, the first Asian language platform for the rapidly growing company as it pushes to expand in the region. Mountain View, California-based LinkedIn also established a small Tokyo office, following the opening of its Asia-Pacific headquarters in Singapore in May.
Arvind Rajan, head of LinkedIn's Asia operations, described Japan as a key market for the company because of its technologically sophisticated work force. LinkedIn hopes that the lessons learned in Japan will ultimately translate into new offerings for the rest of the world.
But in Japan, it faces a work force that is more accustomed to anonymity on the Web than the sort of openness encouraged by LinkedIn and other U.S. social networks. The concept of personal branding or building a professional online identity is also still relatively foreign. Most Japanese workers tend to stay at one company for a long time, and job switches are much less common than in the West.
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