Please allow me to introduce myself

Today is my first day as the new CEO of XING AG and I therefore wanted to take some moments to briefly introduce myself here on our Blog as well. I’m 41 years young, married and have two children. I arrive at XING from eBay, where I’ve held various different positions since 2002. For the past four years I have overseen business operations as General Manager of eBay Deutschland.
Since my appointment was announced several weeks ago, I have been overwhelmed with the kind and positive words I’ve received from so many people. This news was also accompanied by a pleasing side effect: I have more than tripled my number of personal contacts literally overnight. I couldn’t have wished for a better reception and I already feel very much at home after such a warm welcome.

It has long been clear to me, as a member in the past, what it is that makes XING different from similar platforms: Our members form a business community that really is uniquely active. They bring new momentum to professional networking on a daily basis with their many thousands of events, group postings and messages. A central task of mine as the new CEO will be to further develop and expand this unique community. Now I have finally started and I’m very much looking forward to getting to know all of my new colleagues in person. Lars Hinrichs has built up something with his team here in Hamburg that enjoys the utmost respect throughout the global Internet sector. Back in 2003 when almost all online businesses were teetering at crisis point and dozens of ambitious plans had failed, he came up with a new business idea and launched it online just a few weeks later. This alone is testimony to his entrepreneurial spirit and enterprise, more than ably assisted by his enthusiastic team.

The last five years have seen this start-up evolve into a highly successful and globally operational company. We already employ 192 employees in Hamburg, Barcelona, Istanbul and Beijing at present, and all the signs indicate that there is ample potential for further growth – especially in view of the current economic climate.
This places us in a very promising position and, for me, the exciting challenge now lies ahead of making our community the most active worldwide in more and more regions around the globe together with the whole team. We intend to drive the expansion of the platform further forward, integrating new features and functionality along the way. I am, of course, also reliant on your support in our endeavors to make XING even more valuable to you as members. I therefore welcome all your feedback – both positive and negative. I’m extremely keen to ensure a direct exchange with you, and for an online community like ours a Blog is of course a very fitting way to achieve this. I will be keeping you continually updated here on all the latest developments at XING, along with the rest of our 6.5 million plus members based in more than 200 different countries and not forgetting our shareholders. Please therefore stop by here regularly to catch up on our news, or simply subscribe to the RSS feed for the Blog.

As well as my regular posts here in this CEO Corner, I also look forward to communicating with members and reading their posts both in the XING Group and the Moderation Group. I reserve particular respect for the 34,000 moderators who have demonstrated such sterling self-initiative in building up more than 21,000 wonderful groups on the platform. My colleagues in the Community Management department will continue to moderate the group on an active and daily basis. Your input and feedback is nevertheless of great interest to me and I will be sure to keep you informed on particularly important issues.