Remember just a few weeks ago when we discussed our new product development model at XING, Ship it! Well, May is already stacking up to be a big Ship it! month at XING as we’ve fast-tracked a number of user-facing features which will hit the XING website in May. In total, we already know of more than ten significant enhancements and new features set to go live on XING in May 2009.
Today we’re getting a jump-start on Ship it! at XING — May 2009, by launching a couple of fairly significant features to about 50,000 beta users.
Members You May Know
First, we’re beta-launching today a new feature called “Members you may know.”
The new box listing people you may know.
This new area on your homepage suggests people we think you should connect with, including current and former co-workers, classmates, and people who are highly connected to your contacts. As you can see in the image here, I have a couple of XING employees to connect with (Robert Smales and Christian Neila), as well as a former colleague from Jobster (Tony Wright ), as well as a recommendation that I connect with Andreas Gehret who is a former XING employee who just so happens to be re-joining the XING team.
Members you may know makes it really easy to make more contacts at XING and re-unite with your former colleagues. This feature goes live to 50,000 users tonight and then to our entire user-base over the next couple of weeks.
Look for Members you may know … coming soon to your XING start page.
New Header
We’re also beta-launching a new, streamlined header today to 50,000 users.
The new dropdown-based navigation. Click on the image to see the new header in full size.
We’ll write more about this when we rollout the new header to the entire XING member base next week. The top-line story here is that a lot of user research went into creating a new XING header which is more functional, more modern, and just plain cooler. The new header is smaller and we’ve cleaned up much of the clutter that was hanging out at the top of XING pages. The new header also includes drop-down menus for quick access to key features and functions on XING. We hope you like it! We’re already planning the next phase of the header/navigational improvements, so expect to see a lot more in this area.
Look for the new XING header … coming soon to your XING start page.
But Wait, There’s More …
We’re also launching………. a whole lot of other stuff in May. Did you really think I’d talk about it before we shipped it? Stay tuned!
May is going to be A-MAY-XING! (I couldn’t resist!)
Ship it!
PS: If you want to be among the first to experience our new features before everybody else, join the research panel!
Link to this article:
http://blog.xing.com/2009/04/an-a-may-xing-may-is-on-the-way/trackback/
XING´s official twitter account
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Minor issues with Firefox for the new header … search box on top right overwrite “companies” & “best offers” menus.
Ciao
mauro
Hello Mauro,
since we cannot reproduce that glitch with firefox here: Which operating system do you use? Which version of firefox? Anything else that is ‘particular’?
Best wishes,
Christian.
I send you more details tomorrow, everything is ok from home pc (funny indeed, same operating system, same browser).
Mauro
Hi Christian,
First impression is, font size of the header is better. I prefered to have all sub menus of a header menu been shown as it was before. Please consider this.
Have you also considered to have a export-to-Excel (or any kind of databases) function for all contacts?
Sometimes it is useful to have them maintained also in another environment, to be used also when I am offline.
The counter showing the number of members that are online is gone. Will it be back?
Regards,
Robert
Hello Robert,
first of all, many thanks for your feedback which I will forward to the product development team.
I prefered to have all sub menus of a header menu been shown as it was before. Please consider this.
The header is the result of many usability tests and the general response to the dropdown menu was overwhelmingly positive as it saves clicks and space. Is there anything specific you do not like about it?
Have you also considered to have a export-to-Excel (or any kind of databases) function for all contacts?
At the moment, we have an option to export all your contacts to a .vcf file which you can import in Outlook and other mail software. You could import them to one specific folder in Outlook, which you can then export to many file types, excel among them.
The counter showing the number of members that are online is gone. Will it be back?
Feedback from the usability test showed that we should reduce the interface more and display less numbers. However, we’re still in the beta phase of the new header, so nothing is fixed.
I hope I could help you with these answers.
Best, Christian.
It works fine now.
Hi Christian,
Thanks for your answers. I appreciate that.
Regarding the header issue. I am sure that you received overwhelmingly positive feedback on the new layout and design on this. But where I just could see at once, which sub menus one top item has, I need to move first the mouse over the item to get the nice dropdown menu list.
Also appreciated that you are mainly concerned about the performance of the website.
My experience shows that it is more convenient to have the sub menus displayed as it was before.
Don’t get me wrong, the new layout is an improvement to the old one (although I am still convinced that the old openBC layout still has had a better usability, at least parts of it).
Kind regards,
Robert
Congratulations to the new navigation – it saves some clicks when jumping from one module to another (but not within a module).
I noticed that you “cleaned up” the number of currently logged in members… what a pity!