XING holds regular innovation weeks that give our developers an opportunity to tinker around with things and put their ideas into practice. Some of the results of these projects include things like the RSS import feature allowing you to import blog posts and to share them with your XING network. Now we’re happy to present you with another great innovation weeks feature that’s available from today. This feature allows you to use XING with keyboard shortcuts as you’ve most probably come across before in your daily work on the computer. This of course makes it both easier and faster to network on XING.

Here’s how it works
Keyboard shortcuts usually involve pressing and holding either the CTRL key if you’re a Windows user or CMD if you’re on a Mac. We don’t want to interfere with your browser’s own shortcuts, however, that  is why our shortcuts always start by pressing and holding the SHIFT key. (more…)

Imagine you’re driving in a city you’ve never been to before to visit a business partner. You’ve probably used your address book or smartphone to get the address you’re going to and then entered it in your sat nav. But isn’t this process a bit over-complicated? Wouldn’t it be great if you could call up your XING address book in your sat nav and then simply select it as your destination?

This probably sounds like something from “Back to the future”, right? Well, at the moment it is, but it’s actually highly realistic from a technical point of view! That’s because XING is rolling out its API (Application Programming Interface) for external developers which enables them to build great apps just like the idea I mentioned above. (more…)

Editor’s note: This is a guest post from secure.me Managing Director Mario Grobholz to mark the launch of our cooperation. We will roll out the corresponding feature this afternoon.

Many business users with a XING profile also have profiles on other social networks such as Facebook and Twitter. More and more personal details such as photos, comments and opinions are being posted online all the time, which is why it’s essential to ensure that you retain control over and protect your online image and reputation. We’ve teamed up with XING to offer its members online privacy and reputation protection both on the XING platform and beyond it as well.

How do XING members use secure.me?

secure.me is integrated into the XING platform, so all you need to do is activate it. To do so, just click on the secure.me button that appears in the top right-hand corner of your profile page. A window will then open asking you to authorize secure.me – and that’s it! You’re protected by secure.me! (more…)

Marc Haefner, Senior Product Manager

Back in December 2011, XING launched its Beta Labs as a platform for users wanting to try out new XING features early on in their development. This also gave them an opportunity to provide feedback and shape new features to meet their own needs.

Today we launched our conversation view, which started out life as a Beta Labs feature and proved to be an instant hit so we had to make it available to more Beta Labs users than originally planned. We then took all of those users’ feedback and added what we could before today’s feature launch.

But what is the conversation view? The conversation view summarizes your personal messages so that you can see your entire written correspondence with one or more people on a certain subject. Individual messages are listed below one another in a compact view that just shows the first few lines of each message. To view a certain message in full, all you need to do is click anywhere in the compact message view which will then expand to display the entire message. You may well have come across this before if you have a smartphone or email program that already has this feature which is also great for collaboration processes as everyone involved can follow the discussion. (more…)

This week’s platform update makes it even easier for you to find out what’s going on in your network.

If you comment on one of your contacts’ status updates or posts, you’ll now be informed if someone responds so you can always keep track of what’s going on there and see how the discussion develops. (more…)

Dr. Tobias Baier, Product Manager

Anyone looking to discuss specialist topics with other XING members can now take advantage of our latest feature – XING Topics – which is a great way of finding and interacting with the latest interesting posts on a wide range of topics. You don’t need to sign up to use this feature, just activate it in Beta Labs and you’re good to go!

Topics are displayed as tags and you can choose to follow them so you always get the latest posts there. Your Topics homepage also provides you with an overview of the topics you’re following together with the latest posts there. (more…)

Ingo Müller, Software Engineer

A XING profile and the many groups available here on XING are a great way to showcase yourself as an expert online as you can list your skills and experience and also get involved in specialist discussions. You can also link to any other online profiles you may have, be they on Amazon, Facebook, Twitter, Wikipedia – even your own website or blog.

Today we released a new XING Beta Labs feature called RSS import to make it easier for you to share your blog, ideas, expertise and views with your network. All you need to do is go to your profile – where you’ll see a notification text about the new feature – and add the RSS feed to your existing profiles. Then you’re all set!

Content from your blog or CMS will be automatically shared with your network as an update where your contacts can also post comments and share it with their network. Happy blogging with the new RSS import feature! (more…)

Over 90,000 companies and freelancers already have a XING Company Profile, and this number is rising all the time. The first thing companies want to know when weighing up whether to create a Company Profile is what they can do with it or what other companies have done with theirs. We therefore decided to put together an overview of the top five use cases to show you how you stand to benefit from a Company Profile.

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XING combines two key elements of your working life – the skills and experience listed in your profile as well as the contacts and acquaintances within your business network. There are several ways to link the two, such as by recommending someone in your network for a job vacancy or by giving them a reference.

Today’s update provides XING Beta Labs users with another great way of leveraging their network. The new endorsing feature allows people who visit your profile to endorse your entries in the “Haves” section of your profile. By activating this new feature, anyone who visits your profile can endorse your “Haves”. Endorsers don’t have to be direct contacts, nor do they need to have activated the feature themselves. (more…)

About a week ago we launched some new Company Profile features. So far more than 90,000 users – ranging from freelancers to SMEs to large concerns such as Siemens and Daimler –have already claimed their XING Company Profile. While talking to customers to find out their needs we noticed that there’s often a simple solution to their questions and requests, so we decided to write a summary with main five tips.

Tip 1: Search engine optimization
Make sure your profile can be found by search engines as you may well be reaching the right people on XING, but when it comes to range the more the better. So if your Company Profile can’t be found by searching on Google, Bing or Yahoo, you’re completely invisible beyond the realms of XING. We recommend you change this in your settings by going to your Company Profile, then clicking on “Company Profile settings” on the right-hand side and ticking the box next to “This Company Profile is visible to search engines and non-XING members.”

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