Social application market develops rapidly, satisfying users’ various needs such as communication, entertainment, interests, and work. Instant messaging and social networking are the top two most popular features of social applications in China.

Instant messaging had for the highest usage rate of 90.7% according to CNNIC, followed by social networking (60.7%), and photo/video networking (45.4%). Online community ranks fourth most popular feature with 32.2%.

Users between 20-29 years old represent the largest age group in China social media, followed by those 19 year-old and below, and 20-29 y-o.

Users who have junior high education account for 35.8%, followed by senior high/technical secondary/technical school education (31.3%).

About one-third of social media users in China has a monthly income of between 3,000 to 5,000 yuan, representing the largest income group of China social media users, followed by 2,001-3,000 yuan (17.8%) and 5,001-8,000 yuan (17%).

Enterprise company employees form the biggest profession group of China social application users (31%), followed by freelancers (15.7%) and professional technicists (13.7%).

Over one-third (36.9%) of China mobile social media users’ has a daily average online duration of over 6 hours.

QQ and WeChat are two leading platforms in terms of instant messaging app usage rate, accounting for 90.3% and 81.6% respectively.

Mobile instant messaging apps QQ (75.8%), WeChat (69.1%), and Momo (7.3%) are top 3  by usage rate.

Baidu Tieba ranks top among China’s online communities with almost half (45.7%) social media users.

2.9% social media users in China use Maimai as their professional social networking application, ranking top and followed by LinkedIn China’s app.

Interacting with friends is the top purpose for people to use social applications (72.2%) in China, followed by following trending news in time (64.3%), following interesting content (59%), getting useful knowledge and help (58.3%), and sharing useful knowledge (54.8%).

Watching videos and listening to the music is the most frequent used feature by China social media users.

Contacts in social applications are mainly friends in real life (87.3%), classmates (85.3%), colleagues (81.2%), and families/relatives (79.7%).

China social media users are quite active with more than 63% accessing to social applications on a daily basis.

Also read: Mobile social app Momo benefiting from China’s booming live broadcasting business

The internet plays a more and more important role in our daily life. Many people devote themselves in the internet industry to strive for better development. According to LinkedIn, over 280,000 talents work in China internet industry.

The average years of experience of China internet talents are 5.87, well below that of other industries. Over 60% talents work in Beijing, Shanghai, Gungzhou, Shenzhen and Hangzhou, these relatively developed cities in China.

Over 40% talents in the internet industry once studied abroad, and about 97% achieved a bachelor degree or higher. Top 10 domestic and oversea universities talents graduated in 2014 are listed below.

Top 10 Domestic Universities

• 1. Beijing University
• 2. Zhejiang University
• 3. Tsinghua University
• 4. Shanghai Jiaotong University
• 5. Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunication
• 6. Huazhong University of Science and Technology
• 7. Wuhan University
• 8. Fudan University
• 9. Beihang University
• 10. Renmin University of China

Top 10 Overseas Universities

• 1. The Chinese University of Hong Kong
• 2. The University of Hong Kong
• 3. The Hong Kong Polytechnic University
• 4. National University of Singapore
• 5. The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology
• 6. University of California-Berkeley
• 7. Stanford University
• 8. University of Sydney
• 9. University of California, Los Angeles
• 10. City University of Hong Kong

Top 10 Specialties of China’s Internet Talents 

• 1. Computer
• 2. Business Administration
• 3. Language and Literature
• 4. Electrical Engineering
• 5. Communication
• 6. Economy
• 7. Industry Engineering and Management Science
• 8. Mathematics
• 9. Engineering
• 10. Laws

Talents with computer and business administration specialties are most adaptive in the internet field, and other majors such as as language, social media, economy and the like are also popular.

According to LinkedIn, many talents in its talent pool take positions as managers, directors and other important positions in companies like Tencent, Baidu, Alibaba and etc. Engineering, information technology, sales, HR, operation, project management, product management and design are major job positions in China internet industry. Positions as engineering and information technology meke up of the majority. Apart from some office software, java, Linux, Python, MySQL, C++, HRML and other computer professional skills and comprehensive skills become the basic competence that internet talents should equip with. Baidu, Alibaba and Tencent employ a large number of college students, who just graduated in 2014. The booming of internet needs more excellent talents.

In China, 78% talents are proactive towards their jobs, far above the ratio of global proactive talents. 76% proactive talents are satisfied with their current jobs and 40% of the reactive are satisfied with their current jobs. However, the satisfactory degree has no relationship with job changing.

Passive talents spend more time in building a good social communication relationship with their workmates, while active talents have a tendency to devote more time to job hunting activities. Most talents would seek new work opportunities through internet and relationship network.

When having an opportunity to meet with company recruiters for the first time, 69% Chinese talents would like to obtain information such as the position responsibilities, salary, company culture and vision and the reason for the contact.

About 96% talents believe that interviews are crucial for their acquisition of jobs. 83% talents say that bad interview experiences would influence their opinions towards the companies, and 87% talents show good experiences would change their attitudes towards the positions or companies.

With talents, when they have communications with the company leaders, get answers on positions they employ, receive extra message after the interviews and experience the company culture, they would regard the interviews as pleasant experiences.

After interviews, 77% talents would like to get satisfactory news through phone calls, and 65% talents get unpleasant news from e-mails. Messages are expected after interviews, and timely drawbacks could add positive expressions on talents. 94% talents say keeping in touch with managers may lead them to make a decision quicker.

Salaries, promotion mechanism, company culture, and etc. are major important factors when talents consider the jobs they would engage in.

Chinses talents graduated from universities not long ago tend to evaluate salary as their primary reference of jobs. The expected wage of talents to some extent is determined by the recognition level of talents and wages of their previous jobs. Before an interview, searching for the average wages of certain industries may help talents make a proper estimate.

Also read: Baidu Revenues Reached US$2.67B in Q2 2015

Chinese employees’ frequency of changing jobs is higher than American employees in 2014 according to a report from LinkedIn. The report covers Chinese employees from China’s major economic circles, i.e. Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei economic circle, Yangtze river delta economic circle, the pearl river delta economic circle and middle-China economic circle.

The report shows Chinese employees’ average length of service is 34 months while American is 56 months in 2014. Chinese employees’ median of length of service is 24 months, which is over half year shorter than American employees’.

In China, employees in commercial service industry (like Law firms, accounting firms and consulting companies), finance & insurance and Internet industry have the shortest average length of service in 2014.

When changing jobs, Chinese tend to receive job opportunity news passively; the above is a list of factors affecting them to choose a company. Self-development in a company is the first factor  for Chinese employees.

Also read: China Online Employment Market Analysis

The total number of business social networking users in China was only 3.7 million in 2008 but experienced high growth rate last year to over 31 million according to iResearch January data.

China’s Top Professional Social Networking Websites

According to Chinese research company iResearch’s data this January, Dajie.com is leading the business social networking race, followed by Wealink.com, Renhe.cn, Tianji.com and Ushi.com.

Dajie.com was launched in April 2009, focusing on University students recruitment. It expanded to target Chinese white collar with more social networking features. Dajie’s total registered users reached 24 million in June 2013.

Compared with LinkedIn’s 300 million users, China’s business social network is still in its early stage.

Demographics of China’s Business Social Networking Users

The average age of China’s professional social  networking websites is 30, which is the post-80s internet users.

China’s professional social networking users are more educated than overall China internet users with 68% having Bachelor’s Degree or higher. Their average income is about 7,500 yuan and nearly half (49%) are married with kids.

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Linkedin launched its beta Chinese website on 25th February in 2014, naming its Chinese site “Ling Ying”. President of Linkedin China, Derek Shen led a crew of 6 and showed up on Shen’s Sina Weibo. Derek Shen had posted recruiting notice on Linkedin China enterprise Weibo, as well as his profile page on Linkedin.

Linkedin founder Reid Hoffman had been preparing to enter China market for two years, and did a lot of research. Derek Shen revealed to media during an interview with Sina Tech, that China was quite a unique market which barely any international internet enterprise succeeded. Previously, Google, Ebay and Yahoo all failed in China, while Facebook and Twitter never even got a chance. Amazon seemed to be the only giant internet enterprise survived in China. Linkedin had to take an entire new model in order to win a chance of succeeding in China.

Team Up With Sequoia China and CBC

Linkedin set up a joint venture in China with Sequoia China and CBC (China Broadband Capital). Sequoia invested Linkedin in the early stage, it was not a surprise that Sequoia China continued its cooperation. CBC had influence in local venture capital investment, it invested Evernote China, CSDN and Easy Transport. Evernote China “Yinxiang” became a model for foreign companies to enter China market. Linkedin China board of directors includes Neil Shen from Sequoia China, Edward Tian from CBC, and the other three directors are Linkedin founder Reid Hoffman, Linkedin CEO Jeff Weiner and Derek Shen. 

Venture Company Framework

Derek Shen explained that Linkedin China decided to adopt the framework of a new venture company in China instead of a branch company. Linkedin China also cooperated with Tencent Weibo and Sina Weibo in technology level. With the help of successful venture capitals and local enterprises supports, Linkedin China would be more likely to operate in Chinese way.

Departments of Linkedin China don’t need to report to American headquarter, in stead, they all report to Derek Shen. Derek Shen joined Linkedin on January 1st in 2014, and he used to be vice president of Renren Inc, founder and CEO of nuomi website. Before that, he was the head of business development in Google China. At present, Linkedin China only has 6 staff and they are recruiting now.

Professional Network Takes Time

Derek Shen regarded that professional network took time to grow. Linkedin was launched in 2003, it only had 80,000 users in the next year. By the end of 2005, Linkedin registered users just reached 300,000.

Linkedin has been attractive for Chinese users, before Linkedin entering China, it had accumulated 4 million Chinese users. There are several professional networks in China, such as dajie.com and tianji.com, they only have registered users but less user generated content.

Professional network’s business model is to charge enterprise accounts, therefore their core competence is user data. Linkedin China will face the challenge of user growth and data collection, and this process will not be easy.

An astonishing info found out by BI Intelligence that Facebook had 95 million users in China (under 100 million in America), although Facebook was and still is blocked by China Great Firewall. Besides, Google+ had 100 million users in China, Twitter had 80 million and Youtube had 60 million users in China. Linkedin is the only unblocked big social network in China, which had 20 million users.

Other interesting findings by BI Intelligence was Qzone owned by Tencent had 712 million users, ranking the third in the world. It was twice of WhatsApp and three times of Twitter’s users.

The top three chat app were: WhatsApp, Line, and Wechat.