The success story behind Twitter is simple enough: sharing information with friends, acquaintances and more in 140 characters or less. The microblogging service grew 1,400% last year (wow!), and is becoming more and more popular in Germany, as this link (in German!) shows: Last month, the number of ‘Twitterers’ grew by 25%. Now there are nearly 80,000 users in Germany registered on the site. We at XING are no exception. Nearly 2,500 users follow the XING Twitter account, and other XING members are actively typing away. The XING group ‘I love Twitter‘ has 2,225 members, Microblogging has nearly 1,500 members, and a special Twitter Marketing group has almost topped the 1,000-member mark. (more…)

There are many parts of our platform that open up windows of opportunity to our members. The offers posted under XING Jobs are a particularly good example here. That’s why we’re working on optimizing this feature still further. Having introduced Job Alerts, enabling you to be notified by email of job vacancies that match your profile, we have now optimized the search result page navigation too: Now you can click back and forth directly through the posted job offers, as is already the case on the Jobs start page. (more…)

News in my network: See what your colleagues and friends are doing.

We launched the first version of our iPhone client at the end of 2008, designed to give you mobile access to the most essential XING features (status updates, messages, and contacts). And we were pretty overwhelmed with the response. More than 1,500 reviews in the App Store go to show just how important mobile networking is to our users. We gathered all your feedback – from our blog, from Twitter and from the store reviews – and got to work turning the best ideas and suggestions into reality. Today we’re pleased to announce the latest version of the app, which is available for download right now in the App Store. In case you were wondering, the new version is of course still completely free. (more…)

Having dealt primarily with group moderation in my last two posts, I’d now like to return to what group members are set to gain from active involvement in groups. In my first MaximiXING post on groups I already touched on a number of different aspects of group membership, some of which I’d like to tackle in more detail here. (more…)

When we launched Company Profiles, we also implemented the UserVoice feedback system. As you’re sure to have noticed, we’ve already made some of the changes you suggested, such as improved matching of individuals to Company Profiles the on-demand creation of Profiles for very small companies. This week, we’re continuing onward. (more…)

Welcome to the third and final part of our series of posts on XING groups. Having outlined the basics of group membership in part 1 and explained how to start a group of your own in part 2, I’ll take a look today at other options and features open to group moderators. (more…)

XING AG’s Chief Product Officer Jason Goldberg already announced in his blog article at the end of April that a wonderful spring full of surprises is waiting for XING members. After a series of improvements, we’ve had a speedy start to the summer as well. It was a real pleasure for us to welcome Jason to  XING´s “OpenSocial” launch in Turkey.

Jason shared his “OpenSocial” point of view by explaining his vision and experiences at the event held in the Sofa Hotel-Nişantaşı on June 2. He also explained his “Ship it!” concept, based on his firm belief that “the user knows and shows the best”, which was an inspiration for XING’s new Product Development vision. Around 75 guests attended the “OpenSocial” launch party in total. They included Jason, the press, bloggers and application developers. The event went down very well with guests and the media. You can read Jason’s CNBC interview here (wmv-file).

OpenSocial promises to bring many interesting applications to members and is also creating very important opportunities for application developers. They now have the chance to promote their products and services with an app aimed at the benefit of XING members. It presents a superb way of increasing their potential for new jobs and project work as well as for customer acquisition.

As XING Turkey, we’d like to express our thanks to Jason for his successful and inspirational presentation, which will help create new business and contact opportunities for XING members. We would also like to thank Marjinal for their invaluable assistance organizing the event.

At our weekly frontend engineering meeting, I recently held a presentation about a common problem with the Internet Explorer that developers should put more attention on: memory leaks due to its two distinct garbage collectors. And: how to avoid them. So, have some <insert favourite food to be consumed while being attentive /> and don’t forget to imagine the other attendee’s chuckles now and then although there’s no Chuck Norris joke.

Welcome back to MaximiXING, and the second part of the group special feature.  As we described in the first installment, each XING member can start a topic-based or professional group.  You can make a name for yourself as an expert in your field, create and maintain a network of professionals, or just pursue a hobby you particularly enjoy.

As the moderator of a group, you’re responsible for creating and developing a group, and can influence who is a member – which means in effect that you can play a key role in determining the discourse on a specific topic. (more…)

You gotta love automated multiple choice menus. You know, the phone call to a company that starts with “Welcome to Giganitron Corporation. Please select from the following options. If you know your party’s extension, please enter it now.” (more…)