We are the web leader of the year...last year we won silver in the same category with openBC. In a few hours we will know, which prize we´ve won with XING. Exciting!

I am back in town and would love to catch up. Just let me know if you´re around. I have several meetings and perhaps there´s a small chance to meet over a quick drink coffee. By the way, if you’re trying to get in touch with me, you can do it here.

Hilarious coincidence that our marketing team just started selected print advertisements today... are you sending any hidden messages to me? ;)

A few special recommendations for upcoming XING Live events worldwide (check out those wonderful locations!)

- March 8th in Brussels,  Networking in the heart of Europe (Location: @seven)

- March 9th in Istanbul, Networking at the Bosporus (Location: Ekvator Cafe)

- March 14th in Dubai, Networking under palm trees (Location: Sky Bar Garden)

- March 15th in Zurich, Networking with Bankers (Location: HardOne)

- March 30th in Paris, Networking in one of the most beautiful capitals of the world (Location: still a secret ;-)

ps: after-event-photos on this blog, stay tuned!

pps: dont forget March 16th, Networking at the CeBIT in Hannover, please be our guest!

As partner of the CeBIT we are organizing a XING Networking Event on March 16th. As always on XING, you and growing your network will be the main focus of this event. Please be our guests and sign up today

PS: no CeBIT ticket yet? Premium Members get one for 50%

We would like to apologize for the downtime we just experienced due to a failure in our load balancer. The problem has been corrected and things are running again as usual. Once again, we apologize for any inconveniences this may have caused you!

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Our country manager in Dubai Nelly Liebrecht organized a very successful event on February 7th in Dubai. More than 230 members and guests attended. This event was one big step forward in establishing XING as the biggest business network in the country.

Thanks again to our country manager Nelly Liebrecht and the team in Dubai! A brilliant example that XING is truly global and gives it's members the chance to network in pleasant wheather even in February!!

Please check out the pictures of the event.

Inviting your contacts to join you on XING has just become even faster and more convenient. As well as a new preview feature, you can now also include a photo of yourself to make your invitation that little bit more personal.

And you can also gain an instant overview of all the invitations you sent out in the past six months, those contacts who’ve accepted and those who probably need reminding.

The simplest way to invite people and expand your network is to import your contacts’ details from Outlook or Lotus Notes to XING. And what’s more: Each of your contacts signing up also receives one free month of Premium Membership. Happy inviting!

We got the good news this afternoon:  We are nominated for the PR Report Award 2007 for “Innovative PR Strategy."

Guess we have to admit that we are a kind of fussy now, yay! We are competing with big global PR networks and brands like Opel, Unilever and simyo. Please keep your fingers crossed for XING and the team.

More to come in 61 days!

Are you thinking about attending this year’s CEBIT in Hannover and meeting the key players in IT? Don’t miss the chance to get a 50% discount on tickets with your XING Premium Membership!

Check out our PremiumWorld offer!

Today I had a question regarding my flickr account, so I looked for the "contact" form to post my query.  I changed my mind after I saw this:

Today, once again, we’re afflicted with a service outage at the hands of our payment provider, GlobalCollect. As this is not the first such outage, I feel that we should be more vocal about the quality of service they provide us.

From the web site:

"GlobalCollect is the leading Payment Service Provider of local payment solutions for international businesses. For each of our clients, we offer the highest service level that includes a dedicated team who thrives to optimize your payment strategy. This optimization will significantly contribute to increasing your sales and reducing risk. GlobalCollect is a real partner offering a full service that is uniquely in a class of its own."

               
OK - now it’s time to wake up and face reality. One hour after(!) the start of the outage, GlobalCollect sent us an automated email to inform us of the down time. Right now, GlobalCollect “service” has been out of operation for almost five hours during our prime time. Calls made to the GlobalCollect "dedicated" team on a so-called emergency number are answered by a clueless call center agent who promises a callback we have yet to receive. Calls made to the GlobalCollect office are put through to a very friendly receptionist who explains that all servers are down and that no one can answer our calls. Amazingly, it seems that there is not a single soul at GlobalCollect who can provide us with the slightest bit of information about the outage, while in the meantime our company’s business model was at a standstill.

This is totally unacceptable for any serious business relationship, and we at XING are not willing to tolerate this any more. We won't be satisfied with a letter from GlobalCollect pointing to their Internet provider as a scapegoat. By paying for your service, XING expects - at the very least - that GlobalCollect have redundant network connections, if not redundant data centers. For our part, we will definitely be looking for an additional payment service provider.

Update 1: 15.2.07 3pm
We just got a very kind message from Ron Vollebregt (Chief Operating Officer, Co-founder and co-owner of  GlobalCollect):

We fully understand your frustration and we take full  responsibility for the problems regardless of where and how they were caused. Fact is that we have redundancy throughout our platform (incl dual sites) but that for some as yet unidentified reason, failover mechanisms didn't work. I have asked Pieter Stal to contact you to discuss the consequences.

Update 2: 16.2.07 6pm
We got a very friendly "we are sorry" message from Ron today saying the error was at their provider CSC. They promise to look into increasing redundancy. We will see, if we have problems again. In the end, I don't care about their provider having problems, it is Global Collects duty have have at least redundancy.

WebCollect has proven to be a stable platform over the years, includes an SLA of 99.9%, and has been successfully processing millions of transactions per month. The platform is hosted by our preferred supplier CSC. The company is one of the world’s largest hosting providers, is stock listed, and has an impressive track record. Despite this, their professional and secure hosting facility located in Copenhagen, had a full outage of their entire datacenter on Saturday February 10th and Thursday, February 15th.  The outage not only affected GlobalCollect, but also all of CSC’s other clients from payment processors to traffic control centers, BASF/Shell and SAS.

Let there be no misunderstanding that as your payment service provider, GlobalCollect feels responsible for the recent events that have taken place. The nature and frequency of the incidents are unacceptable to all of us, and we will make sure that analysis of these events will be used to properly prevent outages in the future. In the meantime, we are investigating additional hosting partners to further increase redundancy.

21, 5 %    
suffering from psychosomatic issues
21-23% 
are easily exhausted
17%           
having sleep disturbance
12%           
living with a sensitive stomach
11%           
complaining about tiredness
20%        
suffering from bloating
16%
reported nervousness

The University of Hamburg recently publishes a survey about the working and living circumstances of freelancer. Apart from finance, working hours and working conditions, topics like health and threateningly signals are covered. By the way "difficult clients", "missing personal recognition" and "repressing true feelings" seem to have a big impact on the quality of a freelancer´s life.

We know that XING.com professionally it will be of an advantage to all freelancer. XING is a unique people search. Find deals, employees, colleagues, decision makers fast and open doors to thousands of companies. Attention: that was a bit self promotion.    

The survey is worth to read and yet, again it´s in German.

If you have subscribed to the feed for XING press releases (English / German), please note that we have new feeds now:
http://feeds.feedburner.com/XING-Press-English
http://feeds.feedburner.com/XING-Presse-Deutsch

You can also visit our press area for the latest news.

Last Thursday we celebrated our official Kick-Off for XING Hungary in Budapest. Our Regional Manager for Hungary Heinrich Ballhaus and his colleague Orsolya Szőke made a great job in hosting over 400 guests. Nice finger-food, drinks, live-music and one of the fanciest locations in Budapest made this event a truly good start for XING in Hungary.

Thanks again to the wonderful team in Budapest.

Please check out the photos of this exciting event.

Götz Hamann, senior writer for “Die Zeit” - a popular weekly newspaper in Germany – recently cast a critical eye on the valuation of social networks.

YouTube, ein Portal, dessen Nutzer selbstgemachte Videos zeigen und ansehen, zieht in den USA und Europa monatlich etwa 70 Millionen Menschen an. Vor vier Monaten wurde es an Google verkauft: für 1,65 Milliarden Dollar in Aktien. Facebook, das als Netzwerk für Studenten in den USA angefangen hat, wurde im Dezember von 21 Millionen Menschen genutzt. Inzwischen heißt es, die Gründer verlangten zwei Milliarden Dollar für ihre Firma. StudiVZ aus Berlin wechselte im Januar für geschätzte 55 Millionen Euro den Besitzer. Darüber hinaus wird angeblich eine Prämie von bis zu 30 Millionen Euro fällig, wenn das Unternehmen schnell weiterwächst. Den Preis zahlte die Holtzbrinck-Gruppe, zu der die ZEIT gehört.

Evaluating the relative strength of social networks is challenging because the various business models in use are not comparable. In his research however, Hamann looked to the telecommunications industry for benchmarks and points to the suitability of "Revenue per Active Member" as a suitable common denominator for measuring the networks’ relative success. According to Hamann, comparing "Revenue per Active Member" for each of the social networks brings much needed clarity to the heated discussions on the relative success and sustainability of the various business models.

[…] Nimmt man weiter an, dass dies dem Mittelwert der Nutzer im gesamten Geschäftsjahr entspricht und dass MySpace den Großteil der Online-Einnahmen von Newscorp ausmacht, ergibt sich ein jährlicher Werbeumsatz pro Nutzer von annähernd vier Dollar, also etwa drei Euro.

Another interesting fact: Newscorp is obviously trying to keep MySpace revenues hidden.

Mit Mühe ist immerhin die Lage von MySpace zu ermitteln. Seit eineinhalb Jahren gehört das Netzwerk zum börsennotierten Medienkonzern Newscorp. Allerdings weist dieser die Umsätze nicht offen aus. Stattdessen versteckt er MySpace in der Bilanz, die am vergangenen Mittwoch nach Redaktionsschluss vorgelegt wurde, unter »Sonstige Erlöse«.

Read the whole German article

source: Pirmasenser Zeitung