Serving Our Members Better

it is of cause still an open discussion, but from my personell point of view, an offer to “opt in” would be the much better way according to what I understand under permissionmarketing, than the chance to “opt out” that XING offered to the members.

Talking of an “ooops” after having received THOUSANDS of critical comments within hours is just sarcastic. Now offering only Opt Out instead of Opt In with clear knowledge and hope that most users will not notice adverticement from the start and this will calm down the “hotties” is showing what you think of your customers and users. I got that feeling already long time ago when you changed names, then again after changing design. I still stayed as non paying member. But now, reading your few statements and hearing that you are “too busy to take care for this discussion” leads to the conclusion, you are a pretty unserious company leader. All mistakes beginn in leadership.
You may have calculated some gain from the advertising. But most probably nobody tought you about the extended calculation ?
How much to invest to keep a customer satistisfied ? And how much to retain a lost customer ? 10 Times !

By this proceeding you will loose a lot of paying and even worse, of non paying customers. Many of those who doubted if this network is of any use for them, will now quit. The mass will be smaller and people will find less and less contacts. Anyway the reputation of Xing has lost dramatically during the last six month and now is completely destroyed. Seriuos business people (except secretaries and workers – meaning leaders and descision makers!) will turn around. Your “network” will be one more contact/chat portal in the wide web. Nothing more. But definately not the serious business site again.

Enjoy, what you created, leaser! I quit my account today.

Dear Mr. Hinrichs,
sorry to say so, but your message is in my eyes even worsening the whole thing instead of making a real clear statement.
You try to tell the joke, that you, respectivly your company is member/user oriented. The impression your actions and behavior/statements within the different threads is givin is a absolutely profit maximising without taking care of your members, paying and non paying (both of these groups are the ones which are the real value of your company!). A lot of them posted a statement, that the profiles are some kind of business card, either for the paying and the non paying members. You, respectivly your company is placing ads directly on the “business card” with their private and company data. Cases were observed, don´t see this as overstressing the point, that on a profile of a bank employee an advertisment of a competitor apreared. I don´t think that this is a real fair treatment of your members and does not show much respect to their privacy and the wish to use a business plattform. This behaviour I would have expected from a chat plattform, but not from a business plattform. After massive protests in numerous threads and also on external media you decided to row back a little bit and throw a little meatball to the crowd, telling them, that the paying members now can, if they wish opt out the advertisments on their profiles. Again, especially these paying member were in a wide number not aware of this drastic intrusion into their “privacy of a business card on a business plattform” you made with your ads placed within their profiles, as they were not seeing it and there was no clear anouncment that also these very private parts will be smashed with ads.
So now please tell me an the others seriosly, without the up to now shown management bullshit bingo if you are realy member oriented and respect at least a minimum of privacy or not. Maybe you still have the chance to gain back some of the confidence you lost.
Sorry for the hard words and the direct aproach, but it in my eyes this behaviour and the way of dealing with your assets (the members) seems not serious and incredible to me.
Best regards,
Stefan

I’m not a premium user of xing, i get ads beside my profile, but i think the hole discussion is overrated. Sure, paying for an service, you can expect to have additional features und of course no ads beside the profile. But what’s about the excitement that you only can “opt out”, and you’re not “out” from the beginning?
Every company looks up to grow and earn money. Google collects everything from us, no one really cares about! People who uploading their profile data voluntarily to a social network are now barking: “Oh my private data”?
Turn off your computer and you’re completely protected.

Hello Lars,

i just recently noticed the ads when i was looking over a non premium users shoulders.

In some way i can understand the (respected) members that mourn about “privacy”. And yes, of course it might be considered as problematic if bank employee A´s profile shows an ad of bank B.

But we, the members, should also start to think of internet services as “not always for free”. There are so many other social networks out there that had ads from the beginning – alongside the members profiles. It was accepted, as there was nothing else offered from the service from the beginning. And the companies that are offering us such services have a legitimate interest in generating profits/margins for future growth/expansion and so on.

Xing´s “ad free” approach from the companies beginning now of course then was a very attractive alternative. And that was – in my eyes – a very good argument to pay for the premium membership. From that perspective it is indeed an issue for some people that they still pay, but Xing (alone) gains.

Did you ever give a thought on sharing with the premium members?

When a member “opts in” > give them a small reduction on their membership fee. Even better would be > share the ad revenue with them (talking about a small fraction here – not 50/50 There is technology available to match ads which used with a twist could even be used to work against the “ads of competition presented alongside profiles problem”!

From my personal point of view a story always has two sides, and it should at least be respected that Xing listens and acts on requests from its user base. Thats e.g. far better than ebays member management.

And all members that are now fingerpointing: take a deep breath, think, and very honestly: Are you 100% sure that you would perform better than Xings CEO? Are you free of makeing faults – any faults? If the answer is YES – then send their HR department a link to your profile and ask for consideration. Otherwise please be rationale and humane, and give them the chance to learn and react. Constructive criticism is the best way for us users of Xing to support such situations.

As always: time will tell. I wish all members and the Xing team the very best development possible during 2008

Cheers

Peter

Some days ago I got aware of the new advertising-Policy of Xing. I was not happy about it.
The good thing now is, that the solution of the choice has been implemented within 24 hours – that’s quite fast; even for web-2.0. Thanks to your technicians who made this work!
But I don’t like the style. You introduce interesting new features – but the members don’t get asked wether they like the way you do it. Like the “What’s new on my contacts”-Feature which may be nice, but at least I don’t like everbody (or even every of my contacts) to see my changes. I had to change that default to off – so we had an Opt-Out-situation.
Even worse with the ads: the Premium Members were not even able to see how the page is now seen by other visitors since you haven’t shown them the ads; they got notified by other people. This happened without a warning, without telling the people what they have to expect if someone looks on their web-businesscard. This is especially bad for the people who pay the membership so they can use the good features – and get presented in a quite good way.
Yes, I like the way Xing presents my professional data – not many colors, clean, good to view. But there is no place for advertising (in my opinion), especially if I (as customer) can not say what kind of advertising I’d accept. If I don’t like a company, maybe because it uses methods I won’t support it is not good to have adverts from them in my page.

I hope that this case shows you what happens when you just change things without asking all members (or at least a majority). This is in my view the second communication-desaster in some months and a lot of trust into Xing has been lost now.

Dear Mr. Hinrichs,

after reading your posting, I’m not convinced that you really understand or are willing to accept why your customers feel so upset, deceived and maybe even blackmailed about how advertisement was introduced to their profile. Too many polished words, characterization of this worst case communication scenario as an “oops” and focusing on implementation speed of (too many?) features not really felt important by many customers does not offset the loss of trust and respectability which is indispensable within a true business community. It seems that XING is unfortunately descending towards a commodity chat and relation community, where many of the current XING customers would not participate.

Due to the loss of confidence and faith in the way XING deals with paying customers I decided to cancel my Premium membership as of today.

Best regards, Arnd

Lars, you should have mentioned this crucial info at the official annoucement page at XING far earlier!! Now, after things have already happened (even worse by default-settings) and people all over the place feel disregarded and had to complain to even get this whole thing started, this is no sign of a dialog in the networking / social age. What remains is a bad feeling respectively brand damage to XING. I thought you have learned your lessons after the website relaunch “communicaton approach” which has been more like a dictatorial / trial & error way than an integrative communitiy one.

No Iam very unhappy by reading this. This is crucial time and every should understand and go by planning.

Well, what strange idea to invite people to a network, ask them to pay for the use of it, and then stick businesscards at their foreheads so that they go around, advertising for someone else.
Even worse now not to inform all paying guest about the sticking business cards but waiting for them to find out themselves.
Memberoriented? No way!
Go plaster the walls with the ads, thats a good way to do it, or give out special handbags pimped up with ads.
But let alone the profiles!

Dear Mr. Hinrichs,

do you really think, this text was an adequat reaction to what happened? Ooops? And the hint to better read the “news” more carefully…?

I think you still did’t get the point.

Member orientation in fact does mean something different.

You, my dear Sir, speak with a forked tongue.

First you lure executives to your new venture with the promise of a “Advertising Free” platform based on features, transparent management of the platform, and above all the individual possibility to control, as a member, your own circle of privacy.

Thanks to them you grew and received the necessary capital to do what you have done.

In return you continue to spit on this core group of members, and you have for ever lost their trust.

You simply laugh away their concerns and growing anger with an arrogant “OOPS”, I screwed up again.

You have been forgiven before. How long will they continue to forgive your constant stream of “OOPS’s”.

We have seen in the recent past, that real giants in the now old “New Economy” industry, literally tens of thousands of companies, that all but a few thought would rule the world, suddenly don’t exist anymore, all victims of their CEO’s ego and their greed.

You continue to describe Xing as an International Company yet you can’t bring yourself, or allow your employees to speak to the non-German members in, or on, the Xing Platform, about what you have done this time. You chose to spin an answer on this Blog instead. The German members have received a statement, but not the rest of the international members, your heard them screaming by the tens of thousands for your attention, but you responded only to the German speaking part of your international platform.

Web 2.0 is nothing other than Web 1.0 after the bubble exploded in it’s own hype, and this is exactly what you have just written in your Blog post, ego hype. You should have learned your lesson, if not after you crashed your Web 1.0 company, at least after the long steady stream “oops” with the Web 2.0 company you call Xing.

Egos are good for starting companies, but they are seldom good for managing them, maybe it is time to sell out, and let a professional “people person” take over.

As far as the “Cool New Xing Feature”, the “Opt-Out button” goes, you should have never Opted-In for all your members in the first place. This is a lesson even someone like yourself should have learned after your last introduction of a “Cool New Xing Feature”.

Funny but your “Cool New Xing Features” always seem like thinly disguised new ways to make money for yourself, whereas features your members have been begging for, for years, are always promised to be on a list of things to be done in the future, a future that never comes.

Hire professionals and listen (to them and not your own hype), maybe someone born before 1970, an old economy professional that has seen thousands of companies like yours make the same mistakes you are making.

You have had a wonderful opportunity that most will never have, especially in Germany, and that is to flush millions of “New Economy” Dollars down the toilet, and be given a second chance. Your screwing up your second chance, not for yourself, but for that which you have built, Xing.

I am just thankful I don’t have to work under you, it would be a nightmare of frustration.

Kind regards,
One of your former supporters

I am very confident, that Xing has had a lesson and will learn from this. As a plattform you are not only hosting a social network but you are a essential part of it too. the rules, the do’s and don’ts that apply to all of the members of a network are also applying to the host. You are part of the whole. This is the lesson. I am sure Xing will go into a conclave and will think seriously about all about the very complex interdependencies in a social network. I trust in Lars and his team that they will find a sound balance between the interests of the members of the network and the necessity of financing this network. There has to be a new balance, yes.

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We appreciate your feedback. Please have your say under your real name.

To whom it may concern,

Xing Web 2.0 strikes again. Strikes out that is.

Unless of course you consider that the purpose of the platform is simply to generate revenue from the new Web 2.0 Advertising Sales based on the captive audience of educated, highly placed “Old Economy” executives that made up the bulk of Premium Members.

If you, on the other hand, you see it as it is, a business network that is loosing it’s “Old Economy” Premium Members in Europe at a rapid rate, and as such, the intended target audience, Xing screwed up again.

Maybe the millions of non-paying Web 2.0 Asian members (who all love the idea of newly featured Web 2.0 banner ads) won’t notice that their western “Old Economy” counterparts aren’t listening to them any more.

Maybe the Web 2.0 Chinese will open an account at one of those German on-line Web 2.0 “discount banks”, or buy tickets on-line, Web 2.0 style, for a German “low-cost” airline.

How about buying some neat Web 2.0 gifts at Xings new Web 2.0 online store.

No thank you, I’ll just pick up some of the same offerings on my next “Old Economy” trip to China for one hundredth the price Xing is charging, or even better buy them Web 2.0 style online at E-Bay.

I wonder if they are taking Web 2.0 business advice from Bill’s mom again?

Are we “Digital Ready” yet?

Sincerely hoping for new management and direction,
John Cavinov

P.S. “Taeglich Gruesst Das Murmeltier”

Instead of writing a long message (yours, Mr. Hinrichs, was in fact far too long for what it was meant to say), I want just to repeat the one CRUCIAL POINT that has been said already:

There has to be, at least for the paying premium members, the opt IN solution, not the opt OUT.

I part from the idea that you will change this within a month’s time. Or XING might lose a lot of its good reputation, I’m afraid.

kind regards from Switzerland
Myriam Holzner

One must have doubts if customer/member orientation is currently key, otherwise and provided a professional and careful management is in place, what has happened could not have occured. Me, as a Premium member, I would have cancelled my contract with XING, if I would have seen a single advertisement on my profile and other pages. I will monitor the development closely and will act accordingly, if ads are shown on my page.

Congratulations, Mr Hinrichs.
We now got a helpful lesson how to communicate with customers and an example in making my company more interesting for advertisers.

Everyone is talking about XING, and the missing PR was one of the problems of the last months.

You need to grow and you need money for growing. Unfortunately you also need people remembering this social network.
And new customers are far away. XING must be reactivated in discussions.

In this case this was really good work. It doesn’t matter if this was planned or not.

However, I assume it’s not over.
There are a lot of members who will protest again, Awaiting the next possible fault.

BR
Andreas Achtziger
http://www.datenblackbox.de