Three years after the company hired its first employee in the Middle East, professional networking site LinkedIn is making a new push for growth in the region by adding Arabic to its supported languages.
With the addition of Arabic, users can now maintain accounts in both English and Arabic, or opt for just Arabic.
The Middle East is a growing market for LinkedIn, with 14 million users, compared to 5 million members in 2012.
LinkedIn does seem late to the Arabic game, as there are many startups, like Go Ejaza, an online travel agency in Arabic, or et3arraf, a dating website in Arabic, that have been capitalizing on the relative lack of Arabic-based services online.
As an attendee of the LinkedIn Arabic launch party mentioned in The National, "Arabic is spoken by over 300 million of the global population, more than French and Portuguese, yet it is underrepresented on the internet,” said Noura Al Kaabi, the chief executive of twofour54, a media and entertainment company based in Dubai.
However, this lack of Arabic might be a lack of languages in general on LinkedIn, as Arabic is only the 24th language that LinkedIn supports. For comparison's sake, Facebook supports more than 70 languages, Google supports over 70, Twitter supports at least 48 – even photo-sharing application Instagram boasts 25 languages.
Looks like someone needs the Rosetta stone.