The Way Forward at XING: Growth, Innovation and Dialogue

Today we published our detailed results for the past financial year. 2008 was an extremely successful 12 months for us – a year which saw our revenues increase by 80% to 35 million euros ($48.5 million), generating a profit in excess of 7 million euros ($9.7 million). This is something the whole team here at XING can be extremely proud of! For all details please refer to the full press release and our 2008 Annual Report – also have a look at Reuters reporting about us.

I’ve been at XING for a good two months now. The busy last few weeks have flown by and I have had the opportunity to gain a much deeper insight into the factors that make XING so successful. I have spent most of this time getting to know my colleagues, talking directly to members, immersing myself in all aspects of our business and setting out clear areas of focus for the upcoming quarters together with my team.

New features are on the way, designed to create yet more value for everyone that uses XING:

• We will be launching an innovation offensive over the next few months with a clear goal to benefit as many of our members as possible. This offensive will see a variety of new features and functionalities that will enable members to network using XING in even more versatile and effective ways.
• Features aimed specifically at recruiters will hopefully make XING even more attractive for this highly promising target group.
• Last but not least, our network will continue to grow and become more international – opening up more and more opportunities for you to profit from new contacts.

We have set ourselves clear targets for each and every area of focus – and we are already working flat-out to achieve these goals. Much of the development work is already in the “home straight” phase for the second quarter.

At the same time, we also want to engage in a greater level of dialogue with you, our members. You can find out about all the things we’re planning and working on in this Blog – both from me personally and from many other colleagues of mine. We also want to involve you more directly in the ongoing development of XING and learn during this process from your own ideas and proposals for improving the platform.

We will be launching beta versions of new features over the coming weeks and welcome all your feedback from our research panel. Quite simply because it is absolutely in our own interest to develop and optimize XING as quickly as possible in a way that is geared solely to your practical working lives.

We’re delighted that so many thousands of members are already actively involved in this process as beta testers. We are of course always pleased to receive praise and compliments, but criticism and constructive ideas for improvement are even more valuable to us.

Because ultimately, our success is inextricably linked to your personal success as XING users, enabled through ever-more effective and enjoyable networking.

We look forward to receiving your feedback!

Best wishes,
Stefan Groß-Selbeck