All you have to do is visit our sweepstake page and answer the question “What is a XING application?” to be in with a chance of winning one of 72 fantastic prizes.

We’re giving away a MacBook Air, a Jura automatic coffee machine, BlackBerry smartphones, iPod shuffles and 12-month XING Premium Memberships.

And there’s more – If you upgrade to Premium now you’ll also cash in on our special birthday offer:

Become a Premium Member by November 24 and you will receive one additional month of Premium Membership for free – whichever upgrade package you choose!

Check out the offer now

We’re aware that XING is not completely free of harassment, inappropriate remarks, spam, and other violations described above. Although we’re convinced that only a small portion of our members are confronted with these types of contact, we take such situations very seriously, and encourage anyone affected to inform us immediately.

Reporting objectionable contents or activities has nothing to do with being a “tattletale” or “stoolpigeon”, contrary to what is sometimes discussed in forums. In fact, the whole talk of “stoolies” or similar is a rather striking example of inverting the whole victim-perpetrator relationship, implying that by reporting offensive behavior, a victim becomes a perpetrator. The true perp is the person spamming or offending others, of course.

Respect and trust are the basis for everything else

Mutual respect and trust are the basis for every functioning society, and by proxy, every network. A person breaching netiquette by posting inappropriate content also destroys this trust, acts in a disrespectful manner, and lowers the value of a network for all members in it. We cannot, nor do we want to tolerate this type of behavior on our platform.

For this reason, we’re working on a solution so that members who are harassed or otherwise offended by content can let us know quickly and easily. In fact, in recent months we’ve made it easier to report inappropriate content to XING, for example, in contact requests and in the “Ask XING” app. The aim is clear: a trustworthy, safe, and respectful networking atmosphere now and in the future.

This week, you can get one euro (or one dollar, depending on where you live) off per month. That means that you can get the most out of XING with all Premium features for only €3.95/$4.95 a month.

Click here to go to the limited time offer!

Plus, join in on our anniversary sweepstakes for XING members, and you have a chance to win great prizes like a MacBook Air, a Jura coffee machine, or a BlackBerry.

Click here to go to the sweeptakes!

They let you give XING Premium Memberships away as gifts – very conveniently at http://voucher.xing.com. They can be purchased now for a limited trial period to begin with.

Perhaps a contact is celebrating a birthday or an anniversary, or there is someone you’d like to thank, or maybe you’re looking for an added incentive for your employees: Whatever the reason, or even if there’s no reason at all, there’s a choice of four different vouchers available from just €9.95.

The person receiving the voucher can then redeem it by visiting http://voucher.xing.com. You can find out more about payment and redeeming vouchers in the Frequently Asked Questions section.

Why did that person click on my profile?

If you’re like me, you’re probably curious about what motivates Visitors to your profile. You’ll be happy to know that starting today, we provide more information when a XING member visits your profile by clicking from an OpenSocial app such as “Ask XING”. You can use this additional information to help you decide whether the person could be a valuable contact to you or not.

Simplified access to home page apps

Easy access to the applications right from the start.

Since the launch of the XING Partner Ecosystem, we offer a total of 16 applications on the XING platform to enrich your networking experience. And there are different ways to view and use apps. You can either display the apps directly on your home page in what we at XING like to call an “info box”, or, by clicking on the “more” button, you can view the larger and more customizable “canvas view”.

Now it’s easier than ever to get to this “canvas view”: on your home page, there is now a small “Applications” option in the right menu bar. It expands when you click on it, and you can choose one of the applications from those you have installed. If you have a lot of applications installed, this can be particularly helpful – also if your home page is full of other boxes.

Simplified invitations

Up until now, you’ve been able to invite your coworkers or friends to join XING from your home page – all you needed to do was to enter your friend’s email. This is still possible, of course, but now it’s even easier to invite several members at once.

Invite contacts you email.

If you use one of the email services popular with other XING users on the platform, namely hotmail, GMX or web.de, you can sync all your contacts directly with XING, and expand your network in a hurry. Each person you invite will get a free Premium Month – and until September 29, you’ll get a free Premium Month yourself for every three successful invitations. If you prefer, you can also sync your address book from the “full screen” Invitation Page.

Standardized Company Profiles

Our Company Profiles will also go through a round of modifications this week (changes have already been made to the database, and the platform will be updated overnight). We’ve compiled duplicate Company Profiles into one, using public information such as trade office registers, and ironed out any spelling inconstancies resulting from individual profiles. Starting immediately there will be one Company Profile per company on XING, as requested by our users in UserVoice. It goes without saying that member profiles are not affected by this change. With this change, Company Profiles become more a more reliable record of coworkers and employees at companies.

Questions? Feel free to ask them, either here or in the XING Group.

You’re after a reliable removals firm? A plumber with an excellent reputation? A property surveyor or solicitor who is respected in their industry? They should be likeable individuals and ideally come about via recommendations made by people you already know and trust? Look no further!

First off, asking the rest of the XING network using the “Ask XING” app can be an excellent source of information (particularly on more unusual topics). Alternatively, you can use the “Wants” field in your profile to indicate what or who you’re looking for:

• Who can build me customized fitted shelves for the new bookshop I’m opening?
• Where can I find out more about CRM?
• Which caterer can create a magnificent cake by next week for a corporate event I’m organizing?

Mainstream industries and service providers can also be easily found using the Advanced Search. You can also narrow down your search results by entering the beginning of the zip code with an asterisk (e.g. 20*). Or you can search in the “contacts of your contacts” only!

This also comes with another valuable advantage: Once you’ve filtered your contacts you can then approach the people that appear in the results. People love being asked their opinion, especially if they end up recommending their own friends and acquaintances. Typical reactions are often: “I am not sure how qualified he is … but he is a very likeable guy!” Or “I don’t know her that well, but my neighbors are clients of hers and they have raved about her work.”

You can then bookmark non-contacts before making your final decision – simply by clicking on the icon in the top right-hand box next to their profile photo, under the “Edit shared personal info” option.

You usually only find names in the traditional Yellow Pages. With a little imagination, you might be able to find out the approximate age and gender of a service provider. But combining “Search” and “Contacts” on XING, you get so much more insight – from helpful ratings to information about rates and the quality and scope of the services provided.

You might want to check out specific groups during your search too. If, for instance, you’re looking for a motorcycle mechanic, or a tailor, simply select those groups from your list of groups in which you think you’re most likely to find people in these professions. You can then even find out more about particular individuals by searching for any articles or comments they have posted (provided the group in question is visible and the member’s settings allow for this).

Still haven’t found who or what you’re looking for? Do not despair. There are many thousands of specialist groups on XING where you can really pinpoint your research. Click on “member search” and you gain access all the functionalities available in the Advanced Search.

If you have availed of someone’s services and were satisfied, impressed or even inspired by the experience, it is always a nice gesture to let them and others know by posting an entry in their guestbook.  Whenever you see any “Wanted” posts in “Ask XING”, “What’s new in your network” or in a group, you can also introduce both respective members (by clicking, again, in the top right-hand box of profiles). After all: In networking like with so many other things, what goes around comes around!

The new filter options for guest lists (click image to enlarge)

Way back at the beginning of July, weimproved the way you can filter your Events, allowing you to sort participants by city and ZIP code – that’s in addition to existing filters such as participation status or filtering for your contacts. Now we’re adding even more participant list filters: You can search by company, first or last name, and can use placeholders (what techies call “wildcards”).

Setting up the box on your start page

Did you know you can configure this box in other ways too, turning it into a never-ending flow of useful information from your network? Clicking on the pen symbol in the top right corner opens up your Options. Then all you have to do is check the boxes for all the things you’re interested in – and uncheck all the rest, eliminating any news items from the ticker that aren’t relevant. You also have three different options for the number of updates shown at any one time.

Control what other contacts see in their “news”

Taking a different perspective on things: There are sometimes situations where you don’t want your entire network find out about certain changes: perhaps you changed your “Wants” as you are looking for a new job, or you made new contacts that might lead people to guess prematurely that there is a possible corporate partnership in the pipeline.

All you have to do here is make the necessary adjustments in your Privacy settings. Don’t forget though: Even if changes to your profile don’t appear in your network feed, there will of course still be visible on your profile.

Our tip: Set up an RSS feed

We recommend subscribing to an RSS feed of “What’s new in my network”. To do this, simply click on the particular Powersearch as mentioned above, then on the “RSS feed for this page” button in the top right-hand corner. You will be asked to provide your XING login details once again – then you’ll receive the feed that you can integrate into your email program, your browser or your feedreader of choice.

After the rousing success of XING Regional Groups and Events, we’ve decided to expand our Ambassador Program, now adding to the mix XING Xpert Ambassadors, whom you can spot from the purple icon next to their profile. As you might guess from the name, Xpert Ambassadors are experts in a certain industry who frequently organize industry-specific networking events.

Our first Xpert Groups include Bankingclub Online, the largest European online banking community for bank employees, financial service providers and insurance agents, IT Connect Xpert Group, which connect over 24,000 IT professionals in German-speaking countries, and the Franchise Xpert Group. We would like to extend a warm welcome and congratulations to Thorsten Hahn, Norbert Keil, and Jochen Ewald, the first XING Xpert Ambassadors!

In coming months, new industry-specific groups will be added to the rosters. In doing so, we hope to fulfill requests from our members to offer Official XING groups dedicated to specific topic areas. Our members can now exchange information with competent experts in their professional area of expertise, and further expand their offline networking activities.

Starting today, XING’s members will benefit from a wide variety of partner applications on the XING platform.

The XING Partner Ecosystem is made possible via the OpenSocial framework. XING’s partners are able to create applications using OpenSocial and then easily enable those applications to integrate into the XING professional network. The Applications are tightly integrated into the core functionality of XING, and are thus able to leverage XING’s “business graph” of connections between professionals to make the applications engaging and rewarding for XING’s users.

What’s most exciting about the XING Partner Ecosystem is that it is a win-win-win for everyone involved:

• XING’s Members win when we introduce engaging applications for various specific user interests.
• XING’s Partners win by gaining valuable distribution through the XING platform.
• XING wins because our service gets more valuable to our members and our partners.

We have 16 launch applications from 13 partners, from 7 countries. Notably, the XING launch apps represent our focus on both locally relevant and globally valuable applications. We have many applications that function in multiple languages, as well as several apps that are specific to the German-speaking markets.

This is just the start. We will be adding more and more apps in the future.

Got an app that you think might be suitable for XING? Here are our guiding principles for taking new apps onto the XING platform.

1. Open — we are open to launching anyone’s application that we believe will provide user value. In the end, the XING users will decide which apps they prefer.  So, we are OPEN for apps.Come one, come all, with your great applications!
2. Professional — not just any application, apps that are suitable for a professional network, and which provide value to the business community on the markets we serve
3. Rewarding — apps that provide a return on time investment to our users.

Do you think your app idea matches our criteria? Contacts us at opensocial@xing.com.

Here you can view the powerpoint presentation from the launch event today:

But, don’t just read about the apps, I encourage you to check them out!  - and give us your feedback on them. What do you want to see us do better? What types of new apps should we add? Let us know via the uservoice forum, or contact me directly on XING at or via twitter at http://www.twitter.com/socialmedian.

On a very personal note, this is a super exciting day for me as we are launching the first big project I was handed when I joined XING 6 months ago. And, it only gets better from here. More and better to come!

SHIP IT!