XING hosted a truly original event in Amsterdam on Wednesday night, where networking met culture. It was an evening full of theater, music, dance, visual arts, film, humor and of course networking!

As people lined up in the cold to enter the Winter Parade, they were greeted with a warm cup of ´Glühwein´ (hot wine punch) to kick off the night. Once inside, guests received a tailor-made program full of XING networking moments they could attend during the course of the night. Each guest was asked to fill in a XING questionnaire prior to the event – the answers dictated what you did, and who you met during the event.

Opera lovers mingled with opera lovers and were scheduled for an opera performance at 8.10 pm while family-oriented people were brought together at 9.00 pm to watch a short play about everyday family life. The end result being that like-minded people networked – once our guests established a common interest it was much easier to start talking business.

All through the night our guests were treated to eat delicious food from various different food stalls, ranging from a creative crepe to a giant pan of pasta or some tasty cheese fondue.

Once done with eating, XING members could enjoy different performances whilst networking.

As the night started to progress a big band played swinging music and XING’ers took to the dance floor. For the die-hard attendees,the night finished with a ‘silent disco’ where people danced to music they heard only through headphones.

It was a great night where almost 350 Dutch XING’ers met and networked in inspiring surroundings!

Click here to see some more photos of the event.

It´s a deal! We’ve just announced the purchase of NY-based socialmedian Inc., a leading innovator in the online news industry. For XING it´s a huge technological jump as it enables the integration of business news into our network.

Why do we think that socialmedian is a perfect fit for XING? Here´s why: In business success depends on access to the right information at the right time. Both the speed of information and the sheer volume of data have increased rapidly due to the rise of the internet. Traditional media companies, social media such as blogs, tweets, videos and other user-generated websites now provide daily news, leading to a veritable flood of information. The consequence: Time-strapped professionals are forced to parse through numerous news sources for relevant information and sort, organize, and share stories on their own.

Jason Goldberg, new VP XING Applications Platform

Thanks to socialmedian you can save the little time you have. Socialmedian gathers information from about 19,000 sources, including social media services such as Digg, Delicious, Twitter, Flickr, YouTube, Google Reader and many, many more. Socialmedian then filters your news through your social networking contacts. That means you get the news you´re looking for, the news that fit your interests and your passions. And it doesn´t stop there: Due to it´s intelligent custom filter technology socialmedian isn´t just for the individual member. Just think of all the ways it can help boost business for your groups, your events as well as for the company you work for.

On top of this great news Jason Goldberg, socialmedian´s founder and CEO, is going to join us at our headquarters in Hamburg. Jason is a pioneer in the Internet business, he founded the career development website Jobster in 2004 and headed the company as CEO. Now in his new role of VP XING Applications Platform Jason will be responsible for managing global partnerships for application developers and content providers to connect with our XING network.

We cannot wait for Jason to join our team and see how the innovative socialmedian technology becomes an integral part of XING! A big thanks to the deal team: Burkhard, Jackson, Johannes & Julian and everybody else who supported in this process.

We took a couple of photos during the Events release this week, which the whole team is really proud of! And there’s lots more to come in this feature over the next few weeks…Until then you´re welcome to watch a short “Making of” movie that Mireille has produced.

Link:

Interested in working at XING? Have a look at our job site – there are currently 37 job openings, including jobs in the Engineering team.

The title of the awards says it all: Kudos to XING Mobile! In a ceremony held Monday in Munich it was announced that the XING Mobile portal has come first place in the sub-category “Mobile Site, Communities / Games”.

The award is organized by MobileMonday Germany e.V., a worldwide registered society of visionaries, developers and opinion leaders – the movers and groovers of the mobile sector! – with sponsors including HORIZONT, a magazine specialized in marketing, advertising and media. Readers were called on at HORIZONT.net to vote for the best mobile site in different sub-categories, as well as for the latest, most innovative online campaigns.

Ever since launching our Mobile portal in 2005, we have stayed at the forefront of mobile business networking. Thanks to a relaunch in 2007, the Mobile portal became faster and easier to navigate with many new features. Development didn’t stop there either: Just a couple of weeks ago, we introduced the new native XING iPhone App, which has grown in popularity day-by-day since its release.

Thanks to everyone who voted for XING Mobile and of course kudos to everyone involved in creating and running the web portal!

ReadWriteWeb has just published their “Top 10 International Products of 2008”, selecting the best products developed outside the U.S. that demonstrated innovation and support for global Web standards. And we’ve made it onto the list! Here’s what they had to say about XING:

It is important however, to note the financials, something we analyzed back in March this year, which may not be completely in LinkedIn’s favor. The data of particular interest concerns user engagement; visitors to XING stay an average of 43.4 minutes on the site, while visitors to LinkedIn stay an average of 7.8 minutes – a whopping difference of 456%. We think XING has made some good choices this year,…

As we often report, our member numbers are continually increasing. What we haven’t explained in detail is that our presence in certain cities is particularly strong. There are “XING strongholds” around the world, areas in which growth is particularly strong, and where our members are exceptionally active. Take Munich, for example: at present, more than 180,000 people in total are members of XING. That’s around 20 percent of all 930,000 working residents in Munich.

The countless events organized by members for members in the Bavarian city are testimony to their local networking prowess. Since the beginning of this year, members in Munich have organized over 5,000 events in total. This number is up 50 percent from the number of business gatherings organized last year. Spanning the whole spectrum of industry sectors and specialist areas, these events provide an opportunity for XING members to exchange face-to-face with their existing contacts and to make new professional contacts will people they might not otherwise have encountered. They include events held by the “Munich Finance Forum” and gatherings of professors, lecturers, students and alumni from Munich’s “Technische Universität”, to name just two.

As the home of the foremost and most active business networkers in Germany, Munich set the tone for the concept of official XING events around the globe with their regional group, the “XING Community Munich”. With over 40,000 members, it is the largest and one of the most active of all regional groups on XING. The activity and size of the group are largely thanks to the Ambassadors Martin Bockelmann and Johannes Woll. In May of 2004, they invited their business contacts to meet up in person, and the idea of XING Events was born. Since then, they have organized over 60 events. In many respects, Munich is the trendsetter: the worldwide philosophy behind official XING Events “Start on a personal note, and soon you’ll be in business” is a Munich motto.

Overall, more than 55,000 events have been organized via the platform since the beginning of 2008. The number of events being held is growing particularly fast in XING strongholds throughout the Mediterranean region, with members meeting up and networking on a personal level from regional events in Izmir, business cocktail receptions in Rome and entrepreneurial gatherings in Valencia. (Photo: Andreas Schebeta)

At XING we know a thing or two about bringing people together. We help connect over 6.5 million professionals around the globe, after all. The right connections are often just a click away. And it’s no exception when making wishes come true for less-fortunate children in Germany: We‘re inviting our business partners and employees to help fulfill wishes made by kids in Berlin and Munich children‘s homes – by donating directly on the betterplace.org platform right up until December 15th. XING will pledge half of the money for each of the wishes listed on the site. Every single cent of donations made will go directly to the children’s gifts. And all donors can see directly on the transparent and interactive site how their money has been put to good use. So far, 100 wishes have already been fulfilled.
So let´s join together this Christmas season and make children´s eyes sparkle!