Conferences, meetings, flights wherever the country, whatever the occasion, lots of XING members who don’t spend their whole working lives sat at their desks have been letting their contacts know exactly where they are and what they’re up to while on-the-go.

‘Just experienced an inspirational keynote speech’, ‘Still waiting for my flight connection to Dublin’, ‘About the view the new office premises in Shanghai‘ whatever they happen to be doing/thinking/planning/celebrating, business travelers on XING are telling their network about it using their mobile device of choice be it their PDA, Blackberry, iPhone the list goes on.

We’ve just added a nifty little mini-feature: From now on, whenever you change your status messages from a mobile device it’ll be marked with a small ‘cell phone status notification’ so your contacts won‘t fail to miss that you’re on the move!

London’s business commuters will be seeing a lot of XING over the next two weeks. We’ve just launched a major marketing campaign in the UK and have focused our outdoor activities in London (which is my home town by the way).

London Underground’s most busiest stations have been splashed in XING green – with over 400 billboards – you can’t miss them even if you tried! Billboards can be seen in Waterloo, Victoria, Bank, Liverpool Street etc. Additionally we’ve booked print ads in the Metro Newspaper. Almost every guy and gal travelling on the Underground has got their nose buried in one (admit it – you all love the Sudoku puzzles in every Metro edition just as much as I do).

Combine this with a pucker online advertising campaign with ads on websites such as The Guardian, The Times, Sky News, Reuters and MSN Hotmail; Search Engine Marketing and our Network Value calculator (www.mynetworkvalue.com) and bob’s your uncle! (Sorry I just went all Jamie Oliver there!)

With the headline: “Start networking, not just linkin”, we’re making a clear differentiation between active networking Vs. passive networking. Our members are a buzzing, lively lot.  Take a look at Comscore Reports (hurray for Comscore!), which shows that the time spent on XING per user averages at over 20 minutes – which is pretty good – if we do say so ourselves!
We’d love to see more Brits on the site – so get a move on!

PS: We’ve had a great response from the UK Media (e.g. The Guardian, TechCrunch, NMA, B2BMarketing Online ).  There’s also lots of twitter on Twitter – one guy said: “Seen a bloody good XING ad on the Underground”. Take a look at the pics below:

Currently there’s a grand total of around 19,000 groups on XING. And more often than not the people behind these groups have made sure their logo is utterly cool, creative and unique. We’re impressed – so much so that we’ve decided to hold a logo contest to find the real jewels and give them the recognition they deserve.

So we’re calling on all XING members to submit the group logos they think are truly outstanding, and then to vote for the best logos. Besides the honor and publicity, there are also great prizes to be won, including one-year Premium Memberships, for the top three winning groups.

A whopping 400 logos have already been entered into the contest. Perhaps your own logo or one you know of is even better than all of these though! Make sure you don’t miss your chance to find out by submitting your logo without delay! All you have to do is send the link for the group you think has the best logo design to awards@xing.com by October 1, 2008.

We will keep you posted on all the developments here in our blog!

As you probably remember, we reported a while back
that XING is participating in Google’s
OpenSocial Initiative, along with many other well-known companies. What has happened since then and what exactly will OpenSocial be like on XING? Matthias Häsel, Felix Weiss, Mark Schütte and other XING experts are discussing this at the Google Developer Day2008 at the ICM Munich. In a breakout session with Google developer advocates Patrick Chanezon and Chewy Trewhella, they are reporting on opportunities that XING members will have to access cool applications in the future. The applications will benefit XING members in their business lives in many ways, and, of course, all applications must conform to the XING data privacy regulations. XING is pleased to have the chance to discuss all of this with these excellent OpenSocial developers, who work according to the motto “Learn once, write anywhere”.

There is still time to join us and share any ideas you may have.

The Project Management Team is also growing – this week Robert tells us about his experience as a new employee at XING:

Robert, Project Management: We’re constantly on the move. That is the first thing that I noticed at XING, aside from what a great
team I’m working with. The office at Gänsemarkt has undergone many changes since I’ve gotten here. It has been remodeled and expanded quite a bit. The construction work clearly shows how quickly the XING team is growing. The same can be said for our team, the project management team. A new team was put together a couple of months ago in order to keep up with the continual growth at XING and on the website.
Essentially, I am in charge of the coordination of individual project teams, information exchange, quality assurance, scheduling, and, of course, I always have to make sure we stay within budget. I support the Product Managers so that they can primarily concentrate on product development. My experience as a consultant and project manager in various online and multimedia agencies really benefits me in my current position.
One thing I particularly like about my new job is that we not only use the well-known methods of project management but also try new things like using agile methods, which in my opinion are more suitable for handling the challenges involved with managing projects today. I was also very pleased to be given interesting projects right from the beginning and I like working directly with the product managers.

XING is currently looking for more dedicated employees for the Project Management Team as well as for other departments. Interested? Then have a look at our job page.

Today marked the final day of the Olympic & Paralympic Games in Beijing. More than 15,000 athletes participated in the world´s biggest sporting event. Over the last couple of weeks, billions of people from all around the globe followed the progress of the athletes, shared the thrill with the winners and empathized with the less fortunate ones.

About 2,400 medals were handed out to the athletes at the Olympics and the Paralympics. Did you know that there were XING members among the German winners? One of them was fencer Britta Heidemann who won the Gold Medal Match. By now the 25-year-old has become a familiar face in the German media.

Apart from Britta Heidemann, there were other XING members who were successful at the Paralympics. Famous swimmer Kirsten Bruhn will board the flight back home with five medals in her suitcase – she won a gold medal in the 100m breaststroke, a silver medal in the 100m backstroke and three bronze medals in the freestyle. Combined with her medals from Athens 2004, she has now won a total of nine! Two other successful XING members are silver medalist Angelika Trabert (equestrian) and air rifle woman Manuela Schmermund. The latter started the medal fever at the Paralympics by winning a silver medal.

One of the most amazing wins was accomplished by XING member Wojtek Czyz. The former football pro, who became involved in disabled sports after losing his left leg due to an unfortunate string of events, won the gold medal in the long jump on his first attempt with a world record of 6.50 meters.

We are proud to have these successful winners among us. Congratulations to all our XING medalists!

Last Thursday, the first Official XING Event in Moscow was held. Anyone who`s ever been there on business or pleasure knows that Moscow is a city with energy in the air, and this event was no exception. Russian business professionals and expats got together in an elegant ambiance to meet their XING contacts personally and make new ones.

Although the Official XING Moscow/ Russia group was only activated few months ago, the group already has already over 4,000 members , thanks to the continuous support and commitment of XING Ambassadors Chris Helmbrecht and Margarita Chebotareva.

For those in Moscow or environs, why not join us? For everyone else, keep an eye out here for more to come!

The XING platform will be offline on Saturday, September 13, 2008, between 10:00 a.m. and 12:00 p.m Central European Time (UTC+1), due to maintenance work. Please note that users connecting to our site via https might not be able to see our regular maintenance page.

We have made it! Today we have reached an important milestone in the history of the platform: XING now has over 500,000 paying customers. Here is what our CEO says about the news:

“The fact that XING has more than half a million paying members clearly shows that professionals around the world are deriving personal benefit from working with xing.com on a regular basis and are therefore willing to invest €5.95 a month for access to the platform’s advanced features.”

To read the complete press release, please click here.

Not everyone who works at XING is an Internet whiz. Take me, for example: Although I work at one of the top Web2.0 Companies in Europe, I still haven’t managed to get a website up and running. Typing my name into Google would return results from two areas in America: Lucas County, Ohio, and Millheim, Pennsylvania (none of which I’m from).

Not anymore. Thanks to the new BestOffers cooperation, I now have an online presence at www.lucasmillheim.de , and a URL I can share with acquaintances and business partners. And the best part is, I don’t have to learn coding or make do with ugly templates, because the URL redirects to my XING profile. Very nifty!

Go to the XING BestOffers page!

PS: I’m still looking for someone to show me how to set up a Wordpress blog…perhaps one of my contacts’ contacts?

This summer has been full of Official XING Events all around the world. Now, as warm days come to an end (at least in Germany!), Johannes Woll, our XING Ambassador in Munich, would like to report on the highlights this summer.

“Perhaps you’re familiar with Henry Ford’s statement: ‘Coming together is a beginning. Keeping together is progress. Working together is success’? The part about coming together is why we held the first XING event four years ago, and we’ve stayed together since then.

The first event I’d like to introduce is in typical Bavarian style, our so-called Dixiedampfer event, a steamboat cruise on the Ammersee. Over 200 XING Munich members attended this year. For the rest of you, just imagine: networking on the water, with cools jazz sounds by Finnish jazz vocalist Tuja Komi and a tasty Mediterranean buffet. Visitors came from Kuwait and Switzerland, and both natives and guests alike were wowed by impressive panorama views of the Alps.

At the XING Lounge event nearly 300 jazz-mad networkers met at Munich’s Park Café. The sheer number meaning we also spilled out into the street. Once again, the event was underscored by classy jazz sounds (thanks to John Savee for putting us in touch with singer Nina Michelle and her band!).

For those of you who are planning to visit Munich soon, check out our next event the Wies’n Warmup!

You may have noticed we are temporarily offline.
We are solving the problem and will inform you as soon it is fixed.
Sorry for any inconveniences!

Update:  xing.com is fully up-and-running again