Here at XING we’re in the midst of celebrating our collective birthday (number six!), and part of the celebrations is to offer our members discounts on Premium Membership.

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! (more…)

We’ve been asked about them many times over the years and are pleased to announce that they’re now available to you. That’s right, XING Premium Vouchers – the ideal gift for your business contacts.

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. (more…)

The list of modifications that go live today is long, and components all across the platform are affected, from OpenSocial apps to Company Profiles (and invitations, too). But let’s do one at a time:

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. (more…)

Even though they log in to XING every day, lots of members aren’t aware of the full extent to which their network can be of use in their everyday lives. One thing that is often overlooked is XING’s function as a kind of “yellow pages”.

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! (more…)

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”).

“What’s new in my network” is one of the best loved and most used features on XING. It lets you see right on your start page (which you can customize) what’s happening right now in your own personal network. Perhaps a contact has uploaded a profile attachment, decided to attend an event or joined a new group … This feed let’s you know about it in seconds! Clicking on “more” or the respective Powersearch option gives you the complete list of updates. (more…)

Come one, admit it: if you’re reading this you’re familiar with the Official XING Regional Groups. You’re not? Well, they’re groups moderated by XING Ambassadors, who also organize the Official XING Events. Around the world, over 200 XING Ambassadors head regional XING groups and organize XING Live! Events.

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. (more…)

It gives us great pleasure to announce The XING Partner Ecosystem.

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. (more…)

Hi everyone.

I’m thrilled to announce that we’ll be launching the XING PARTNER ECOSYSTEM next week.

This major product launch will mark the first time that XING’s business partners are able to provide their own applications on the XING platform. This provides a huge benefit for XING’s members as our partners will compliment XING’s own applications with additional products and services made better by being delivered over the XING professional network. (more…)

XING has successfully been recruiting Ambassadors around the world for two years. Ambassadors moderate official regional XING groups (click here for an overview of the regional Ambassador groups) and regularly organize networking events. The Ambassador program adds an offline dimension to networking on the XING platform. Every year thousands of members meet up at official Ambassador events with the motto “Start on a personal note, and soon you’ll be in business”. Some examples include the summer festival held recently by the XING Community in Munich or the networking event at the Kiel Week festival. In 2008 over 50,000 XING members participated in more than 700 of these events.

Deniz Seebacher, XING Ambassador No. 200

New XING Ambassadors are continually joining the ranks and new regional groups are continually being created around the world. In June we welcomed the 200^th Ambassador, Deniz Seebacher, in Guatemala.  She tells us how she ended up becoming an Ambassador:

“I have been a XING member since 2005, but I really started using the business network intensively when I moved to Guatemala for personal reasons in 2009. I was looking for new contacts in a country where I hardly knew anyone. My search for German-speaking members in Guatemala City didn’t return many hits, but I wrote to a few of them. That’s how, in addition to meeting two people who have become very good friends of mine, I got to know Christoph and his company Officient, which led to my first local project. Since Christoph and I value XING as a networking platform and wanted to use it more intensively, we started looking for contacts on the local market. At the time, XING was looking for Ambassadors in Central America. So we decided to become Ambassadors and start up the XING Guatemala group.

(more…)