XING jobs on Twitter, a platform for new projects and an announcement

There are less than two weeks until you can open your presents – people are trawling hectically through the shopping malls and streets, and on Gänsemarkt, too. The brisk pace continues a few metres above it all – our developers are nimbly tapping away, line of code by line of code, the project managers are coordinating assignments, our colleagues in Quality Assurance are on top bouncer-like form, making sure no bugs get into the platform.

Launching today: XING Beta Labs

And all our staff’s efforts are so that we can present you with a whole load of visible improvements to the platform. These include:

•  Three Twitter accounts, via which vacancies posted on XING can be tweeted straight away. This will automatically increase the visibility and audience for all public jobs (apart from XING mini-jobs, which you communicate via status update). As well as the general @xingjobs account, you can also check out current branch- and region-specific vacancies at @xingitjobs and @jobsithamburg. In line with the ‘keep it short’ Twitter principle, these tweets are restricted to the position and also, where applicable, city, industry and salary.
•  A new platform for innovation. At XING Beta Labs, you can view and test our developers’ latest products – still in the beta phase but tested for security and major bugs, of course. You have the option to activate and inspect the individual features. As usual with beta software, the product can be used now, but some features may be missing or the design might not be quite perfected just yet. You’ll find further information in the Beta Labs, where you can also try out the first features: a marketplace for the self-employed and a tool to create polls – see below.
• Managing tags has been much improved – now you can rename, delete or merge entire categories, and we have also improved our suggestion function when tagging contacts.
• Following our latest update, users of our iOS app now have access to an improved and more expressive profile view, with links to instant messaging services amongst other things and a button for making direct calls, as well as better platform stability and faster loading times, especially for members with numerous contacts.
• You can now access the latest group articles on our mobile website http://touch.xing.com – directly via your network stream (‘Latest news’). And if you access links in the notifications in your groups via new answers etc. from a mobile device, you will automatically be directed to a mobile view. And of course we are working on enabling the writing of mobile group contributions.
• Once you scroll down a lot, a convenient link to take you back to the top appears in the bottom right corner of the screen.

Beta Labs feature: XING Polls

What’s the most-wanted Christmas present of 2011? Which app do you need on your smartphone to achieve the best productivity in meetings? And of course: which party would you vote for if on Sunday … users of our XING Beta Labs can now ask all these questions and many more – and receive answers from your network.

Creating a poll is simple; there’s now an additional ‘Poll’ tab right in the ‘Communication Box’, which is on the XING home page where you publicise status updates or links, for example. You can enter the question very easily here, whereby the following options are available to you:

• Maximum of ten answers.
• Are multiple answers enabled? (This would make sense for questions about presents or apps, less so for questions about politics or your favourite modes of transport.)
• Is the poll ‘public’? In this context, public means that this is visible to all of XING, not just your contacts network. Your contacts can always view and participate in your poll – adding a social component to your question.

Beta Labs feature: Freelancer Marketplace

With over 1 million freelancers and one-person businesses, XING has already become the place for freelancers and project managers to connect with each other and work together, for example in the enormously successful Freelance Group. We’re making it even easier to organise projects and to find the right partners for them with the Beta Labs feature ‘Freelancer Marketplace’.

You can post your project very easily, just choose the ‘Create new Project’ option in the ‘Freelancer Marketplace ’ n the ‘Jobs and Careers’ area (you must have activated the relevant feature in the XING Beta Labs), and then you can enter the description and requisite remits. Freelancers can now view your project and ‘bid’ for it with a price estimate.

You can get in contact for queries via XING Messaging. When you’ve found the right partner, just select them and close this phase of the project organisation. Like all Beta Labs features, the Freelancer Marketplace is in the early stages of development, and so is subject to change or further development.

We are officially ending the year with this multitude of features, but are simultaneously laying the groundwork for further improvements in the first few weeks of the new year. In the meantime, we hope the more adventurous among you will enjoy using the Beta Labs and wish all XING members continued networking success!

PS  This page could be especially interesting for the developers among you.