( Fast Company ) -- Users in China are reporting that access to LinkedIn has been blocked throughout the country . By all indications , it seems that the popular career networking site has run afoul of the country 's infamous Great Firewall . According to LinkedIn 's Hani Durzy , the company is aware of a blockage in China and is `` currently in the process of investigating the situation further . '' The shutdown follows days of calls for a `` Jasmine Revolution '' in China , on the model of the Tunisian and Egyptian revolutions . Access to Twitter and Facebook has been blocked throughout China for some time ; Chinese internet users seeking to use Twitter have been forced to access the site through difficult-to-use Virtual Private Networks ( VPNs ) . However , Chinese dissidents have another way of accessing Twitter ... LinkedIn . Use of LinkedIn , which is fully integrated with Twitter , was by far the easiest way to access Twitter in China . Messages can be easily read and posted through Twitter via LinkedIn . One Chinese Twitter user who accesses both Twitter and LinkedIn through a proxy posted photos to Twitpic that seem to confirm a Chinese LinkedIn outage . Adding credence to the LinkedIn-shutdown-to-block-Twitter strategy is the news that the Chinese government has started censoring the name of U.S . Ambassador Jon Huntsman from search results on the wildly popular homegrown Twitter/Tumblr clones Sina Weibo/QQ Weibo . Weibo means `` microblog '' in Chinese . Huntsman faces widespread charges in China of support for the Jasmine Revolution after a citizen journalist spotted him watching a pro-democracy protest from within a crowd this past Sunday . Like any good American abroad , Huntsman was standing outside a McDonald 's . According to The Wall Street Journal , Chinese dissidents have been disseminating calls to protest and organizing events via LinkedIn . Reuters notes that the LinkedIn outagecould hurt the firm 's chances at an IPO : . `` If the disruption for LinkedIn is permanent in China , it could hurt the company 's prospects at an IPO as a ban would exclude the company from the world 's largest Internet market -- about 450 million users and growing . '' `` It certainly would be a negative in terms of the company 's future growth and profitability , '' said Jay Ritter , a professor of finance at the University of Florida . `` This is something where investors would take it into account and be willing to pay a little lower price per share . '' Luckily for LinkedIn , China 's Internet censors are notoriously fickle : Sites blip on and off the Great Firewall frequently , with no prior warning . Related : Fast Company 's Anya Kamenetz recently interviewed LinkedIn CEO Reid Hoffman . Read more about the social networking site as part of our Most Innovative Companies of 2011 project . Related : Fast Company 's Anya Kamenetz recently interviewed LinkedIn CEO Reid Hoffman . Read more about the social networking site as part of our Most Innovative Companies of 2011 project . Copyright © 2010 FastCompany.com , a unit of Mansueto Ventures , LLC . All rights reserved .
Users in China are reporting that access to LinkedIn has been blocked . Comment: