43% higher revenue and 29% higher EBITDA in comparison to last year’s Q1: we can be proud of the quarterly results we’ve just published. Even in the midst of a global financial crisis, XING continues to grow very profitably. We’ve strengthened our market position, while at the same time making strategic decisions for future growth. I’d like to give my deepest thanks to all our employees for their hard work in recent months.
I’m especially happy that we’ve really stepped up our speed of innovation. We introduced a new feed on the home page – “Members you may know” – which has been very popular with members. Now with the successful launch of OpenSocial applications, we’ve laid the technical foundation for providing our members with relevant features developed by third-party developers. By doing so, we’ve started setting our strategic course for increasing the viral growth of our community in order to ensure profitable growth in the future.
In the months to come, we plan on keeping up the tempo. Now that we’ve launched the OpenSocial framework, we can start incorporating applications from selected third-party developers. Part of our focus is on HR professionals: we’re working on features especially for recruiters. We’ll also continue to improve the features we’ve added, working hand in hand with you, our members. I don’t think I’m only speaking for myself when I say it’s getting exciting around here.
Another of our areas of focus will continue to be international expansion. As we have in the past, we’ll continue to invest in our international markets. In the future, our focus will be on continental Europe, in particular the countries where we already have local offices: Italy, Spain, and Turkey. More than ever before, we want to localize our platform for users in other countries, for other cultures – and make efforts to accommodate the needs of our users in these countries. In coming weeks, international members will start to see the first benefits of our efforts.
In the coming months, we’ll work hard to develop the platform, and try to incorporate your suggestions into the development process. I’d like to thank those who have already taken the time to use UserVoice, our new feedback forum, to suggest improvements – keep up the good work! We know that in the end, our success depends on making your networking experience on XING more effective, and more fun.
I’m looking forward to your feedback!
Link to this article:
http://blog.xing.com/2009/05/the-xing-path-growth-through-innovation/trackback/
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Hi,
it is interesting that my blog – where I was reporting about the questions feature and later the news feature – get quite a lot of hits from people searching for “xing mitglieder fragen”. I am not sure if they cannot figure out how it works or what it is — I do NOT get any questiopns in the comments.
And then there have been first reports that people quickly lost interest in the News-Feature. I was using social median (passivlely I admit) before and I think that social filtered news make sense in a platform like XING. I am just not sure if the current user population has interest to use XING this way. Thoase later transferring from facebook to the ‘business world’ will probably be more inclined to consume news within XING.
(I admit I was to busy recently to use any of the 2 features more intensely…)
I forgot: It is great that U now have open Social You know what your moderators and specially Ambassadors have been waiting for …