Fight! LinkedIn Launches German Site Against Local Player Xing

LinkedIn is launching a dedicated site for Germany where local - and already IPO'd - business network Xing predominates. The US business networking site has an existing 500,000 users in Germany which can populate the new country site. LinkedIn now has 9 million European users. Given that 30% are in IT, marketing, advertising and finance - all sectors hit hard by the downturn - activity on the site has skyrocketd in the past few months. Xing has over 6.5 million members across Europe and parts of Asia, about 510,000 of whom are paying about $90 per year for a premium account. Last year LinkedIn launched sites for Spain (on 200,000 users) and France (on 700,000). This is the fourth of LinkedIn's country-focused sites. It has 41 which are simply translated versions.