Quick post to highlight the launch of LinkedIn in German last night:
LinkedIn Blog: Nächste Haltestelle: Deutsch
Great work to Nico & the whole team on this next milestone for LinkedIn. I’m really enjoying the launch video that the team put together:
I’ve been reading (thank you, Google Translate) some of the local coverage about the launch. I have to admit, TechCrunch gets a special nod that I give to any blog post that references Fight Club well.
Truth be told, I think Kevin summarized our motivation best in the opening of his blog post:
With increasing international travel and interaction, we know how critical communication is to commerce. And while English is used in parts of the world, many of us would like the option to do business in our native language.
We’re excited about this launch because it represents the first step in our process of learning more directly from our German users what features and functionality they find most useful. We continue to believe that leveraging your professional reputation and your professional network is the best way to make professionals more productive, worldwide.
Psychohistory 
While this is true – even with my level of english today I am of course still way more fluent in German than in english – it is disappointing to see that language is thought of to be the first relevant area of business.
It is not. Especially given when you say “We’re excited about this launch because it represents the first step in our process of learning more directly from our German users what features and functionality they find most useful. ” I am sorry but if that is your first step in getting to know the users, then you are missing out on what is there already and has been for some time.
It is an important step, yes. But it is by far not the most relevant one.
Hi Nicole,
I probably should have said “our next step”. As you correctly point out, we have had hundreds of thousands of German users for some time on LinkedIn, and we have already begun the process of learning what features they find most valuable on the site. It’s not surprising, really, given the power and functionality that we provide to professionals at no cost, and the tremendous reach of the global LinkedIn network.
While I understand your philosophical point on some level, not surprisingly the ability to use and transact the site in their primary language, German, is definitely the most common feature request from Germans. So, from a user point of view, supporting the native language of Germany was definitely “the next step”. We actually have supported the ability to create a profile in German and 41 other languages since last fall.
At LinkedIn, we like to celebrate each new improvement we bring to our users. It’s part of our culture, and something we are proud of. Please don’t confuse that with a belief that we are done learning or delivering on the best professional platform in the world.
Take care,
Adam
Yes you should have. ;)) and no, I do not expect you to stop moving forward.
And I’d like to make clear that there is a difference between what I am pointing out and what I am using. While German surely has been a high demand, it makes the problem that on a site where eveything is in German Germans (and other languages as well) tend to ‘do’ stuff in german there as well, which ist not reallly helping / bridging the way.
In the meantime, if you could achive a non mixed language setup, I would very appreciate this – I really don’t want to receive German messages from Linkedin, even not if they are just half in German. ;))
Not going to bug you with any further on this because that discussion belongs some place else. 😉
ciao
Nicole