The 26,000+ groups on our platform form a key part of the interaction that takes place every day on XING. Groups are the ideal place for members to demonstrate their expertise in a particular field, learn new things, or find new contacts and potential business partners. In the first of a multi-part series I’d like to show you how you can make the absolute most of XING groups – both as a member and as a group founder and moderator. (more…)

Microsoft introduced inline frames in 1997 with the release of IE 3. Based on HTML 4 technology, iFrames are a modification of <frame > tags, and place one (frameset) HTML document in a frame inside a normal HTML document. (more…)

We dedicated the last post to searching for jobs on XING so this week we would like to discuss an often underestimated aspect of your profile: your guestbook.

Many members are already using it as an excellent tool for marketing themselves. There’s hardly a better way to advertise than through satisfied customers and enthusiastic contacts. These kinds of entries are not only rewarding to read for oneself, they also show members how much other people appreciate the quality of a person’s work. What is more valuable today than a sincere recommendation? (more…)

Welcome to the part three of introducing Scrum at XING. After explaining the basic considerations and challenges in the first two articles, this time we will discuss our procedures and results up to this point. (more…)

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. (more…)

It is now about a month since we launched the beta version of our Company Profiles to Premium Members, and this feature will soon be available to basic XING members as well. We’ll be launching in three phases, to make sure we have enough capacities to reply promptly to user questions  – giving an additional 2 million members access to “Companies” every week, which they’ll find in their newly redesigned XING header.

Tens of thousands of members have been using the feature over the past few weeks and sending us valuable feedback on their initial responses and user experience. A massive thank you for this from the whole XING team! There’s good news to report too: The first features and changes to be made as a direct result of our feedback tool UserVoice are going live today. Here’s just a brief glimpse at some user-initiated changes. (more…)

Today we are not only starting to gradually increase the number of members using the Company Profiles, we are also completing the first major optimizations of this feature based on your feedback. Besides these large steps: if you are a Premium Member and send messages to several contacts, you will be shown how many recipients you can still add. The main view of your messages has also been revised so that it aligns with the new header better.

Dear XING members,

A week has now passed since the launch of our OpenSocial applications “Ask XING” and “XING News”. It has been an amazing experience to see the apps spread and see our members making use of them The most popular question we have in Ask XING so far is which is the best German beer – but why not.
The response to the new apps has been overwhelming. You may have noticed this by the slowness of the apps at times, but the team is working flat out to improve this performance.
For those of you who haven’t had the chance to use the applications yet, let me share some general information with you: (more…)

Welcome to the third and for now last part in our maximiXING series on careers and job searches. After discussing here profile settings and what you can do with Groups, today we take a look at XING Jobs, the job market on our platform. At first glance, this is all very easy to use – and that’s true! But there are a few good ways you can optimize your search to handle different challenges. (more…)

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. (more…)

Welcome to part two of the Scrum case study at XING. After explaining the reasons for introducing Scrum in the previous article, today we will discuss hurdles associated with the transition. (more…)

Hello out there – my name is Ingo Helmke, and I’ve been a Product Manager at XING AG since July 2008. Since I’ve been here, I’ve worked on improving and expanding XING Jobs, in particular integrating videos into XING Jobs with the assistance of our partner JobTV24, and was involved in the relaunch of XING Marketplace as XING Jobs. Before I started at XING, I worked as a Manager of Product Design at POET AG, and before that as division manager of User Interface Design at Pixelpark AG. (more…)

Naturally, the launch of the OpenSocial infrastructure and the automatic notification of new job offers are themes that dominate at the moment, written on every project management whiteboard in large letters and circled twice. But at the same time our programmers have been carrying out a number of improvements, which – though written in smaller letters on said whiteboards – make networking on XING more comfortable. This week, those improvements are in the areas of messages and events. (more…)

Hi all,

After months of hard work, we have today released our OpenSocial-based Applications infrastructure, as well as the two first applications: XING News and Ask XING. A lot of valuable applications will follow soon, many of them developed by a number of partners that are currently turning some brilliant ideas into reality. (more…)

Hi everyone.

I’m thrilled to announce that earlier today the first two OpenSocial applications went live on XING!

The OpenSocial framework enables XING and its partners to rapidly launch applications that enrich the XING user experience by tapping into the social-graph of relationships on XING. Put simply: XING and its partners can now build applications that provide enhanced functionality to XING’s members. XING’s members will immediately benefit from these applications as they will gain access to helpful tools, content, and services in a wide range of product categories. These applications are integrated into the XING platform and in doing so make use of XING’s members’ connectedness. The XING team will be building a number of applications ourselves while a number of partners will also be launching their own applications on XING via Open Social. (more…)

The XING Paris group has around 1,000 members – pretty impressive, considering it was only founded a few weeks ago. Ambassador Louis-Serge Real del Sarte just organized the very first official XING Event in the French capital on 30 April. The get-together was held in the swanky bar at the Méridien Etoile Hotel, situated in the heart of the city between the Eiffel Tower and the Arc de Triomphe.
(more…)

Welcome to the second part of our maximiXING series on careers and job searches. Having taken a look at optimizing your profile for employers in the last post, here’s an insight into the most interactive part of the platform: Groups. (more…)

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. (more…)

Development projects on XING are very interesting, but can also be very complex and demanding. Just imagine: Hundreds of functions, 16 languages, a variety of payment systems, over 20 technical partners who connect to the website, four revenue streams and over 100 employees involved in developing the platform. At the same time, we have to be in a position to rapidly adapt to changes in the market or business conditions. (more…)

Alright folks … Now it’s gonna start getting interesting.

Remember last week when I said that May was going ot be a huge month for new features on XING? Well, here we go.

The following new features just shipped on XING to the entire platform:

• An all new streamlined header which makes XING easier and faster to use.

• Members you may know - a new box on your XING start-page which suggests people for you to connect to.

• Send messages to multiple contacts at the same time - include up to ten of your XING contacts in a message and reply all to message threads, just like email!

• And a super-secret stealth feature that we’ve been working on for more than 5 months here at XING just went live tonight behind the scenes, and will start being exposed to users next week…

Much more to come in our A-MAY-XING MAY at XING.

Ship it!

Why are you on XING, anyway? Obviously to network with your colleagues, business partners and contacts, or to make new contacts. Our goal here is to support you to the fullest. Using the company profiles, groups or the display and search functions in your contacts’ contacts is one way to make this incredibly easier. Wouldn’t it be even better if network s and companies who you likely know would be conveniently suggested based on your profile? Without you having to fill out all sorts of search criteria? (more…)

Hello! My name is Rainer Gibbert, and I’ve been the User Experience Manager here at XING since this March. If you’re not familiar with the title, that means that I’m the one responsible for the user interface, ergonomics and the like. My job is to make the platform smoother and more intuitive for you, the user. (more…)

Dear Members,

It has been a few weeks since I presented you with some simplifications of our privacy settings, an adjustment which should make our platform even easier to use. I am happy to announce that on Wednesday we will be launching one of the most member-requested features: sending messages to multiple contacts simultaneously. (more…)