“Move Over Silicon Valley, Here Come European Start-Ups”… says New York Times senior writer John Markoff.
… “The epicenter was Silicon Valley, but that has created a wave of innovation that has now reached the entire world,” said Yossi Vardi, an Israeli entrepreneur and investor who financed his son’s development of ICQ, an early Internet chat program later sold to America Online.
Internet start-ups in Europe received a significant boost last month with the initial public offering of Open BC/Xing, a German Web site that is a competitor of the American site LinkedIn for social networking among businesses…
Read the full article about DLD – THE technology and media conference in Europe – and other successful European companies.
Link to this article:
http://blog.xing.com/2007/01/xing-and-the-new-york-times/trackback/
XING´s official twitter account
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LinkedIn Connects to $12.8 Million
Venture Capital backing to aid push into European market.
-> http://www.redherring.com/Article.aspx?a=20994&hed=LinkedIn+Connects+to+%2412.8+Million
but:
LinkedIn is by far the best known business networking site in the United States, but it has yet to saturate the European and Asian markets. With 2.5 million users in Europe, it nevertheless lags behind competitor Xing (OpenBC) in Germany.
So keep up with the Jones.
Sparky,
http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/jan2007/tc20070129_642507.htm?chan=search
LinkedIN wants to compete directly with Xing in the German by introducing localized languages. Whether or not it’s actually worth it to just chase one country and one language remains to be seen. So it’s not a big deal if it lags behind Germany when it has 2.5 million in Europe…far more than Xing at this point.
I don’t think you can be everything to everyone. Offering 15+ languages is nice but only spreads your resources thin. I’d like to see more market penetration into the English speaking markets with Xing.
LinkedIN has made huge progress w/ just focusing on one language. They’ve also won the PR battle so far as most of the media has focused on Linkedin and not Xing.
Whether you want to admit it or not, LinkedIN is the media darling at this point and every other business focused social networking site is a distant second.
I’d like to see that change. More people should know about this platform and the quality of employees behind it (Zhiyi, Maria, Justin, Robert, etc….)
Dear Dean,
many thanks for these points.
Indeed I think Xing a.k.a. openBC should slightly be more focused especially with its premium services.
The willingness to try new things while not diluting its audience makes LinkedIn an attractive investment.
First I did not like linkedIn as it was to job market focused IMHO, but more and more it gets interesting.
I guess what is critical is their shareholders e.g a Guy Kawasaki telling you how to connect and use LinkedIn.
http://www.goingon.com/permalink/post/8465