Jeff Jarvis – the bestselling author of “What would Google do?”, all-round nice guy and source of inspirational thought – took some time in Hamburg to talk us (and also at the next 09 conference). He joined XING employees in our event room and spoke about his ideas outlined in the book, as well as engaging in some spirited discussion about the potential outcomes of a “googlified” XING.
The book's original cover.
“It’s not so much about Google itself,” he began, “but about a new Weltanschauung[1] of the post-industrial, post-mass consumer age” – setting the tone for his entire talk. “Give the people control, give them a platform, and they’ll figure out the rest”.
Jeff took us on an insightful journey that discussed a systemized furniture store known for its low prices, a systemized coffee store known for its not quite so low prices, a “googly” restaurant, social networking on planes and trains, and much much more. His rhetorical repertoire included gems about a handful of companies who’ve understood, and many more where there’s plenty of room for improvement.
So-called “Dell Hell” is now legendary: Bad experiences with the manufacturer’s customer support not only meant he bought a PowerBook instead, but also led to a general snowball of consternation in the English-speaking blogosphere. These days Dell makes sure it sets an example with IdeaStorm.
“Customer service is marketing. Every dollar you spend on customer satisfaction is money spent on advertising,” he concludes. Companies also have to ask themselves time and again how they want to get and stay profitable. AOL – his former employer – should have “realized they were actually Facebook”, way back when they were busy been producing pretty browsers.
Jeff Jarvis talking to XING employees about the "post-Industrial" age.
Another one of Jarvis’ mantras is that “Life is beta”. Prototypes come as standard at Google, with hardly any feature being launched without the red beta logo. Users are given the chance early on to try out the features and give their feedback, making them a central component of the product development process. This correlates directly with XING’s “Ship it!” philosophy, where we’re launching new features in the beta phase and then developing the product further with your feedback on board.
It became increasingly obvious to us that we’ve been adopting many of Jeff’s ideas as a company for a while now, and that this is the path we certainly intend to follow: listening to users, being transparent, being honest, collaborating, developing in the beta stage. In short: Doing everything we can to provide the best possible tool for networking.
A big thank you to Jeff for taking the time to talk to us!
[1] His second most-favourite German word, the number one being „Fingerspitzengefühl” (intuition, the ability to carefully and skillfully potentially dangerous situations.)
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