Marc Ehrich, Product Manager Mobile

So you’re at a trade fair or conference and you meet some interesting people you’d like to connect with. Business cards are one option, but wouldn’t it be easier to just shake hands via XING? Well, our Mobile Handshake feature, released in September 2010, let’s you do just that. The Mobile Handshake uses HTML5 geolocation functionality in smartphones to allow XING members to add contacts via their browser or native apps (iOS, Android, BlackBerry).

The latest version of our Android app which we released today makes it much easier to add and share business contacts. Near field communication (NFC) offers users a quick and secure way of transferring data wirelessly over short distances. Anyone interested in adding a new contact can simply open up their XING profile on their smartphone and then hold it up to the smartphone of the person they want to connect with. The process involved in sharing other members’ digital business cards is just as easy, too (you might have to turn on the English transcript in the video below):

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Today’s release includes a number of changes to improve usability in and around our platform. From now on you can add links to comments that are highlighted and can be clicked on by other users. In addition, we’ve improved the keyboard usability when it comes to adding tags.

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By Victoria Schiffer, Software Engineer and Annika Tanudjaja, Junior Software Engineer.

Have you come across XING’s new share button with its enhanced statistics regarding shares, comments, clicks and more on a website you visited recently? Maybe you were wondering if you could implement it on your own website, too? Well we’ve got good news for you because you can! Here’s how to do it:

Share Button Builder

Go to the share button page that’s also available via the footer on www.xing.com to find the best button style for your site and to configure it to meet your needs.

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Today’s release includes a number of new interaction and information options to improve the range of your links, group posts and Company Profiles.

Improved content sharing thanks to the new share button

The new share button.

You probably talk about your hobbies and various other topics while you’re in the office or when out and about in the evenings. If you’re also keen on sharing information you posted on XING on other sites and vice versa, you can now take advantage of our new share button without losing any of your privacy or having to make a distinction between your working and private life. The share button is a simple way for you to share content such as your blog or third-party news articles with your XING network. To do so, the site you’d like to share needs to have integrated the share button, which is why we came up with a simple button builder that also allows you to get link statistics such as the number of clicks and shares. (more…)

As is customary between Christmas and New Year, things are fairly quiet here at Gaensemarkt in Hamburg. The public holidays are now behind us so it’s time to start looking forward to 2012. But before we do, I’d like to look back at what’s happened here at XING over the past twelve months.

I think I’d be going overboard if I tried to go into detail about all of the new features such as the lunch planner and MINI job ad we introduced in 2011, so I’ll stick to the highlights from our product strategy and the points I think are most interesting to you.

In June 2011 we overhauled our site by introducing a completely new layout that includes new interactions focusing primarily on network activity. Not only that, we also introduced the option to “like”, comment on, share and recommend content.

Just over a year ago we acquired amiando, a Munich-based company, in order to expand and simplify our activities in the events and ticketing segment. I’m very happy about the ongoing development of our PLUS events and the fact that amiando turned over more than ten million euros by the end of the third quarter.

In terms of innovation here at XING, we recently launched our Beta Labs – a platform hosting beta-stage projects that are developed at high speed and of interest to XING users who’d like to test drive them before they go mainstream. And let’s not forget that our API will be released in 2012. (more…)

It may be the shortest day of the year, but our developers have been busy and are releasing the fruits of their labor which includes a number of optimizations.

We’ve made things easier for our mobile web app users who access XING by going to touch.xing.com on their mobile device’s browser. Now users can access group posts and view new group posts either in their “Network News” stream of by tapping << followed by “My Groups” in the menu that appears. By the way, you can also “install” the mobile web app like you would with the native apps by adding a link to your home screen. And we’re still working hard to allow you to reply to group posts when out and about. Oh, and our latest Android app now also features the optimized profile, including an easy shortcut to phone people. (more…)

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: (more…)

Just after noon on November 18, 2006, OpenBC became XING and anyone who tried to access the OpenBC website was automatically redirected to XING.com. But it wasn’t just the name that changed three years after OpenBC’s launch; the entire platform was redesigned from the ground up.

A lot has happened in the five years since then, and the changes don’t just apply to the design or technology. When OpenBC became XING, the company (which continued to trade under the OpenBC for a while) had 70 employees and around 1.5 million members. As things stand today in November 2011, XING has 420 employees and over 11.4 million members, which represents huge growth both in terms of the company itself and its member base. The following screenshot illustrates how XING used to look when it went live back in 2006.

So November 18, 2006, was a major milestone in the company’s history and reason enough for us all to take a moment to reflect on the past. We’re always really happy to meet people at XING events who tell us that they’ve been with us “since it was OpenBC”. On that note I’d like to take this opportunity to say thank you to everyone involved in making sure XING remains a success.

Update, Monday, 7.29 p.m.: Our search feature is up and running again! We apologize in advance if you experience any further difficulties. You may also encounter a few performance problems on certain parts of the platform, but please be assured that our team is working at full speed to ensure full reliability as soon as possible. We’ll also keep you posted with the latest developments.

Update, Monday, 9.44 a.m.: We’re currently experiencing a couple of faults on the platform. But don’t worry – our team are working hard to make sure that everything is up and running again as soon as possible. We apologize for any inconvenience this may be causing you and will of course you informed with the latest information.

Update, Sunday, 5.39 a.m.: Step two of the expansion of our data center infrastructure is done. XING is up and running again. Thanks for your patience. Currently we are fixing the search function.

In order to make sure that XING can continue growing in the future, we recently started to expand our data center infrastructure. This Saturday (November 19) we’re carrying out step 2 so from 10 p.m. onwards, XING will be offline for a few hours. But don’t worry – we’ll be working at full speed to get the platform up and running again as soon as possible.

To get the latest during the downtime, just follow us on Twitter @xing_com.

Today we published our results for the third quarter of FY2011 (interim report Q3 [PDF], press release). This is the first reporting period since our relaunch in June and since XING was added to the TecDAX in August. The figures again underline the growth course seen in previous quarters.

Following the major overhaul of our platform in June we’ve been busy focusing on gradual improvements across the board, the result of which includes the MINI job ad or our new Sales membership. Both of these features are targeted at specific XING users and provide them with major benefits to make sure that we cater to specific member needs while also making general improvements that apply to every member.

This strategy is certainly paying dividends as XING continues to grow in every segment of the business. This applies in particular to the new sources of revenue, i.e. business models in place alongside the conventional Premium model. In our core market consisting of Germany, Austria, and Switzerland (DACH), we saw member growth of 19%, meaning that we passed the 5-million-member mark there for the first time. The 5.1 million users we have in the DACH region are proof that we have the most members in those countries, and we intend to consolidate this position in the future. (more…)