This week it’s Kris, our new Marketing Manager in China:

Kris, XING China: I joined XING China about a month ago as Marketing Manager. In fact, it was no accident that I started working for XING. The Internet industry in China has been experiencing rapid growth in recent years. New ideas have constantly been emerging from the web 2.0 phenomenon, and social networking here has seen one of the most rapid developments in the Internet business. So joining a social networking company has long been my dream. I came across the XING recruitment info and sent in my CV. I was delighted when my dream came true and I was offered a position. I’ve been working in the Internet industry for years and have been very impressed by XING’s concept and services. I think that XING is providing business people around the world with a very useful tool by giving them with a convenient way to make new contacts and stay in touch with their networks. Being the new guy on the team, I received encouragement and guidance from everyone. A special thanks to Dr. Song and Cindy for taking the time to help me get oriented in my new position. here. Every day I get a better understanding of XING’s business concept and am continually impressed by the new things I learn. I firmly believe that I can contribute to the development of XING and that my previous work experience will be beneficial in helping XING do an excellent job in China.

Interested in working at XING? We are currently offering 37 jobs in Hamburg, Istanbul, Barcelona and Beijing.

It’s Hakan’s turn to introduce his "Piece of XING". Hakan Gönenli is our Country Manager for Turkey and works in our office in Istanbul.
(click on the image to enlarge)

All this week we’ll be promoting XING in Milan, Italy with a rather unique promotion that has been turning heads and getting mobile phone cameras snapping in the world’s fashion capital.

How have we been doing this? With the help of small, yellow, sticky things – any guesses? Duh…Post-Its (what were you thinking?) – a business person’s best friend. How? Read on…

This week we’ve hired a cute BMW Mini and completely plastered it inside and out with XING Post-Its. The mini can be seen in various business hot spots around Milan and is certainly an eye-catcher (see pics below). The post-its contain a link for 1 month’s free Premium membership on XING and passers-by can simply peel off the post-its, take them home and sign up on XING in their own time.

A promotion team on the scene are also handing out flyers containing a voucher for a free coffee at the nearest coffee house – this caffeine kick is sponsored by us.

We’ve also got post-its stuck all around town, on bus stops, poles, walls, parked cars, telephone boxes etc… follow the trail and you’ll end up at our promotion site. There’s also a huge advertising billboard in Via Boccaccio not to mention almost 200 advertising panels covering all lines in Milan’s metro system.

Have a look at the photos below to see more:

This week, Félix, our new Business Development Manager in Barcelona, describes his first few weeks at XING:

Félix, XING Spain: One day I logged on to XING, stumbled upon a job offer that matched my profile, clicked on it and a few interviews later, here I am. Before I joined the XING team in Spain, I worked as Corporate Account Manger at Regus, the market leader in global business centres. That’s where I discovered the power of networking. I chose XING because networking became my key success factor at my last job and because I was impressed by all the XING people I met during my recruiting process: Miriam, Karsten, Lutz and, of course, Lars. Everybody is just so passionate about the company and their job. My role as Business Development Manager involves the development of Groups, the Ambassador program, Marketplace and BestOffers in Spain, with a special focus on large-scale accounts. I have been at XING for five weeks now and I’m discovering more of XING’s capabilities every day and better solutions for our users and potential clients. I especially like how fresh the company is, the flat structure, and the fact that we have the best technology – and last but not least, I love our office in Barcelona and the views from our large terrace!

Are you interested in working for us too? If so, be sure to take a look here for our current job listings at our offices in Germany, Spain and Turkey.

When we announced the new XING Plugin for the Internet Explorer 8 Beta 1, lots of people came back to us and asked for a Firefox version. And now here it is: The new XING Plugin for Mozilla Firefox. The new plugin allows you to highlight the name of a person or company on any website and find out how many XING results match your keyword. All you have to do is highlight a word, click the right mouse button and choose “Find on XING”. Here’s a quick example: I just read an interview with Lars Hinrichs and wanted to check if he’s on XING so I highlighted his name and started the search.

These are the results you see when you’re logged out, if you’re logged in to XING, you’ll automatically get a list of profiles containing the keyword you searched for. The new Plugin is available in the XING download section from today onwards.

We´re currently performing a brief maintenance measure. XING will be back online in a couple of minutes. We apologize for any inconvenience and wish you a successful business day.

Update: XING.com is now available and at your disposal

I am happy to introduce our very first Ambassadors to join the XING program from Latin America!! Augusto Castañeda based in Lima, and Carlos Fabián Vega together with Federico Pacheco in Buenos Aires will soon be holding the first official XING Events in their respective cities. Anyone belonging to the Ambassador Groups “XING Buenos Aires” and “XING Lima” will automatically be invited to these exclusive networking events. All non-group members are of course very welcome as well!
The XING Ambassador Program is a worldwide network of dedicated users, who moderate their respective city group as official XING Ambassadors and hold exclusive networking events all over the globe where users network “offline”.
If you’re from Latin America, keen to moderate your local XING group and provide clear added value to members by organizing official XING Events, we’d be very pleased to hear from you.

Augusto Castañeda Carlos Fabián Vega Federico Pacheco

This week Patrick is up to tell us a little bit more about the Investor Relations department at XING. (click to enlarge)