XING is becoming more international and more local at the same time

I have spoken on various occasions over the last few weeks about our areas of focus and our targets as a company. Just by way of a reminder: our absolute key goal is to create added value for our members – by providing them with new features and applications that help them to work and network even more effectively using XING. We’re making fast progress here, having launched a more than steady stream of new features over recent weeks: from Company Profiles to the “Members you may know” feed, and the first OpenSocial apps “Ask XING” and “XING News”. We’ve stepped up our rate of innovation considerably – and look forward to receiving feedback from as many of you as possible. But that was just the beginning! We’re continuing our innovation offensive and I look forward being able to tell you more about it very soon – with regular posts in our blog.

Today I’d like to talk about one particular focus of ours – our international business. We have reached some significant milestones as a Germany-based company over the past few years, and currently around 4.3 million of our 7.5 million+ members are based outside of the German-speaking world. We intend to provide even more added value for these members in future. After all, (most) business is local! And this applies to XING too.

Hakan Gönenli.

In concrete terms, this means we plan to focus more strongly in future on the specific local needs of users in our key markets. Although networking does essentially work by the same set of rules – whether you happen to be in Istanbul, Barcelona, Milan or Hamburg – there are in fact a number of differences if you take a closer look. That is why we’ve established strong teams in our key markets – aimed precisely at responding better to these local needs.
I’d like to take this opportunity to introduce our Country Managers:

Hakan Gönenli in Turkey

Since May 2008, Hakan Gönenli has been heading up XING business in Turkey. Hakan has a lot of experience in the industry and is working with his team in the Istanbul office to increase market awareness of XING and to continue building up our position as the leading local business network in Turkey. He has many years of experience in the Turkish Internet and telecommunications market, having worked not only at the leading Turkish GSM provider, Turkcell, but also at the Turkish Dogan Media Group where he was in charge of the Internet division Dogan Online.

Cipriano Moneta.

Cipriano Moneta is heading up our new office in Milan
Since March 2009, XING has also had a local office in Milan to focus on the needs of our growing online community in Italy. Cipriano Moneta is an internationally respected Internet manager and we were delighted to have him join our company as a Country Manager to help us continue increasing the number of members we have in Italy. A native of Milan, he was previously the Managing Director at jobpilot Italia Srl, where he played a major role in making the job portal the market leader in Italy. After that he was Vice President at Monster Worldwide Deutschland GmbH, where he was in charge of European marketing. The leading Italian manager association, Manager Italia, voted him “Manager of Excellence” in 2005 for his outstanding work.

Daniel Perez.

Daniel Perez in Spain

As Country Manager, Daniel Perez is responsible for XING Spain. He worked in investment banking in London until 2000 and then returned to Spain to work in the Internet industry. Before coming to XING in April 2009, where he has been heading up the office we opened in Barcelona in 2008, his experience included co-founding two start-ups and serving as Director of the Spanish branch of the job portal Monster.

Our Country Managers and International team decide on the best regional strategies for promoting and increasing member growth and activity in their particular countries. This strategic planning includes local marketing activities, any necessary localization of the platform itself and defining the particular features available for Premium Membership and basic membership on a local level in their country. Our members in these countries can look forward to some exciting changes!

We remain fully focused on expanding our platform – both at home and abroad. Ultimately, all of our users will gain advantage from this, as a greater diversity of contact and business opportunities on an international level will strengthen the entire XING community. We are committed to making XING the most active business network in more and more regions throughout Europe, and you are certainly more than welcome to help us by recommending XING to your business contacts in other countries.