Organizer Klaus Eck kicked off today’s Social Web Breakfast at the East Hotel in Hamburg with a little exercise to get things going: Guests were asked to introduce themselves in a few words and let everyone know what it was they last purchased online. From airline tickets through to carnival costumes and Jamie Oliver woks – The answers that came up included just about everything you could possibly think of! So where was this all leading? Well, today’s topic at the event (which alternates between Hamburg, Munich, Cologne, Frankfurt and Berlin) was: How can communities be effectively developed and adapted to promote sales processes?

Smatch.com – a Web 2.0 recommendation platform for fashion, home and lifestyle, has been asking itself this very question since last fall. Project Manager Nele Henning spoke the audience through how sales processes can be boosted through recommendation and members’ tastes.  She demonstrated with the platform how product search and selection in the realm of eCommerce can work better with the help of Web 2.0 technologies and communities. The inevitable (and legitimate) question which came up in the round of Q&As afterwards was whether users will really be willing to create a profile for the umpteenth time when they already have so many online logins as it is. Her answer: There will always be niches for specialist communities, where people with the same particular interests will want to find each other – the case in point being fashionistas. Today the lively discussion could also be followed on Twitter for the very first time.

 
We’ve just announced the acquisition of cember.net, the leading online business network in Turkey. This is great news for all of us, but especially for the Turkish speakers in the XING world, as cember.net with its 280,000 members is the largest professional network of its kind in Turkey, one of the fastest growing national economies in Europe. I’d like to take the opportunity to give my heartfelt thanks to the entire team in Turkey for their tremendous efforts in the past years, especially founders of the network Çağlar Erol and Nihan Colak Erol, and to welcome them to the XING Team. Looking forward to seeing you all in Istanbul!

cember.net XING'e katılıyor
Şu sıralarda, Türkiye’deki önder iş dünyası ağı olan cember.net'i devraldığımızı duyurduk. Bu, hepimiz için büyük bir haber, fakat özellikle XING dünyasının Türkçe konuşan üyeleri için önemli; çünkü cember.net 280.000 üyesiyle, Avrupa’nın en hızlı büyüyen ulusal ekonomilerinden birine sahip olan Türkiye'de kendi türündeki en büyük profesyonel iletişim ağı. Bu vesileyle Türkiye'deki bütün ekibe ve özellikle portalin kurucuları Çağlar Erol ile Nihan Çolak Erol’a geçmiş yıllardaki olağanüstü çabaları için yürekten teşekkürlerimi iletir, kendilerine XING ekibine hoşgeldiniz derim. Hepinizi İstanbul’da görebilmek ümidiyle!

Since Saturday January 5, 2008, no online ads have been featured on any profiles of Premium Members. This is in response to the continuing feedback XING has received, which clearly shows that the majority of our Premium members do not wish to have online ads on their profiles when viewed by basic members. We very much regret that we misjudged the situation. And for this we would like to offer our apologies.

This move means that Premium Members are exempt from all advertising on the XING platform – both in terms of their own profile page and their general user experience on the XING platform. Basic members will continue to see ad banners on their start page, on profiles of other basic members, the search and search results pages, and other parts of the platform.

Why has XING introduced online ads for basic members?
Besides member subscriptions (Premium Memberships) and eCommerce (Marketplace and PremiumWorld), XING will also be driven from now on by the additional revenue generated from online advertising. You might be thinking: How is this relevant to me as a member? The answer is pretty simple: Just as you have invested time and effort into your network of people on XING, we have to invest in delivering services in a reliable, secure and effective way, with new and powerful features. More revenue equals more opportunities to invest in the technology, the platform, the team and ultimate in serving you. All members will benefit here. We will continue to work towards making both Premium Membership and basic membership more attractive: Basic members will be able to benefit from select features currently reserved for Premium Members only. Meanwhile we will be launching new exclusive services and functions for Premium Members in addition to their exemption from online ads.

Which data will be used for online advertising on XING?
We plan to make advertising on the platform as relevant as possible for our members. Targeted online ads have not yet been launched on XING, but this is planned for the future. This targeting process will be based solely on members’ anonymous data, such as their gender, city, or age. Personal data, i.e. specific information that can be attributed to a specific individual, will not be forwarded to any third parties at any time – either now or in the future. It goes without saying that this includes all personal information such as members’ addresses or cellphone and landline numbers.

As the operator of the XING platform, we are responsible for ensuring that our members’ data is treated securely and remains protected in accordance with our Privacy Policy. We are acutely aware of just how important it is to our members that their data is treated confidentially at all times.

The placement of online ads on XING adheres of course to all German and European data protection legislation and guidelines.

XING members have full control over their data security and privacy settings – and will continue to do so in future. Meanwhile advertising for basic members on the XING platform will help us to continue improving our services for all members.

Dear Members,

When you’re always striving for the best, sometimes things get a little worse before they get better.

In the last couple of days we have received a great deal of member feedback and witnessed much heated discussion regarding one aspect of our newly launched advertising system. As a non-Premium Member you´ll know that online ads have been featured on some pages including other members’ profile pages since mid-December. Of course, as a Premium Member you currently don't see ads on any XING pages. The discussion arose because, frankly, we didn’t think of everything in advance. What happened was that non-Premium users were seeing ads when they visited Premium Members’ profile pages. The “oops” on our part was that we failed to offer our Premium Members the chance to opt out of (deactivate) having ads displayed alongside of their profiles. Our members objected to this, and we acted to change this as soon as we heard. It has taken us 24 hours to implement after announcing the change, and this option is now available in Premium Members’ individual settings.

At XING we strive for constant innovation for our members. Many features in today's social software landscape were first introduced by us as a direct result of listening to member requests. Many other features that have entered common use in the industry have sooner or later been launched on XING. It's a key challenge to address certain changes within all social communities in a way that suits and informs all members at the same time with the same information. Especially in an increasingly global environment with cultural and regulatory differences acting 'across borders', so to speak.

Last year, we launched 51 releases, over 20 major new features, and loads of smaller changes and adoptions. With this kind of development run rate and innovation, it is sometimes easy to slip up when entering new, unchartered territory. Despite our sincerest intentions and our intensive efforts to predict all possible use cases of any new features we develop, we are not always able to predict the way a feature will be received by our millions of members. As soon as we realize that large numbers of members take issue with something, it becomes a priority straight away for all of us in the XING team.

We pride ourselves on both speed and security at XING. That is why we’re able to implement changes within hours after a release – as in this case. Of course with millions of members depending on us it sometimes - in more complex cases - takes a day or two to come up with a solution everyone is happy with. Sometimes we put in a temporary fix until a more durable solution can be coded. Overall we’ve chosen to implement more releases instead of less. We deliver updates and alterations every week, sometimes small changes or new features, sometimes bigger launches, and this gives us the opportunity to develop and implement features faster for you. This brings added benefits for you, and increased challenges for us, which occasionally mean that we don’t get it quite perfect first time round. 

In 2008, XING will be driven by three different revenue pillars: member subscriptions, e-commerce (different Marketplaces, PremiumWorld) and advertising. You might be thinking: Why should I care about this and how is it relevant to me? The answer is pretty simple: Just as you have invested time and effort into your network of people on XING, we have to invest in delivering the service in a reliable, safe and effective way, with new and powerful features. More revenue, equals more opportunities to invest in the technology, the platform, the team and ultimate in serving you. We´re currently planning for some of today's Premium features to perhaps become available to non-Premium users in future, since we’re now able to cover more of the costs with advertising. At the same time, we will of course certainly be launching more brand new Premium-only features. Over 100 people at XING in three different locations are already working to give our members added value – and the good news is that we want to increase this number again in 2008, in turn improving the service you enjoy.

Our company exists because of our members. We are and always will be member-orientated. After all, the happier our members are, the happier our investors are. So it is a big deal for us when some of our members are unhappy.

This week many of our members felt that they were not adequately informed about the introduction of advertising on the XING platform. We did in fact announce that we would be introducing online ads on 16 November in the “XING news” displayed on your start page. A press release announcing the advertising launch was also published on 12 November. Having said that, we should have communicated in a clearer way precisely where the online ads would be appearing on the platform.

“XING news” - directly on your start page when you log in – is always the best place to look to find information about the most important developments at XING. We would urge you to take a look at this news on a regular basis – it is our way of keeping you in the know. This blog is an important channel, too. We have become more proactive in our communication, informing our members increasingly in advance about upcoming developments, hence giving you more time to get familiar with new features, ask us questions and give suggestions (this was particularly the case with the "Whats new in my network" feature, where we did a better job of implementation based on member feedback regarding privacy). Last but not least, we have a great team of people working in our community and support department, who are on call to take direct care of you and are always willing to get in touch and respond to your questions as quickly as they possibly can.   
There is always room for improvement, and we're always looking for solutions and improvements to the way we work. And in future we want to work even more closely with you, the XING members, to ensure that our new feature releases continue to please as many of our members as possible. We have started to launch beta groups on the live site. We are also further staffing up our quality & testing team.

We are always pleased to receive, listen and react to feedback from members. Not only that: We depend on it. Because ultimately we only succeed as a business in the long run if we ensure that we satisfy our members. And that’s why you matter to us.

Lars Hinrichs

Update:
From now on, Premium Members’ profiles will not feature any form of online advertising. You can find out more here.