As I’m sure you already know, Ruby on Rails is a really hot topic at XING. We’ve been reporting on this in various places over the past few months.  As the main sponsor of this year’s ‘Rails Konferenz 2008’ from 9-10 June in Frankfurt, XING is holding a Spanish-themed get together on the eve of the conference – Monday, June 9, at the ‘Leon Garcias’ restaurant, in Kantstraße No 25.

We will serve Spanish finger food and sangria on offer and you also have the chance to eavesdrop on XING programmers from 8p.m., who will be holding short presentations on various different subjects throughout the evening. Johannes, for instance, will be talking about engineering@XING, while Norman and Tammo will be turning their attentions to rconditions- their open source product designed for easy handling of underlying business errors. Phillip will be explaining how we deliver fast pages in spite of site activity. After all this you’ll have the chance to ask questions and chat with the XING developers. 

Interested in coming along? To secure one of the few remaining places left, all you have to do is leave a comment here and you’ll receive one of the five available tickets!

We’re looking forward to meeting you!

P.S. Are you already something of a Ruby on Rails expert? Into other aspects of developing? Be sure to check out our Jobs page – XING is currently on the look-out for developers.

Starting today,  we'd like to invite Basic Members to our Happy Hour! During the whole month of June, you'll have loads of chances to get two months' Premium Membership for the price of one.

Want to get in on it? Just check out http://happy-hour.xing.com

There you will see a timer which counts down the days, hours and minutes till the next XING Happy Hour. All those of you who upgrade to one month's Premium Membership during Happy Hour will receive a second month for free. Membership is renewed for another three months after this period, and can be cancelled at any time.

Did you miss the first chance? No worries. If you couldn't take part the first time around and are still not a Premium Member, you can sign up for an email reminder alerting you to the next Happy Hour. The offer will be available at the time announced on the XING start page as well. The first XING Happy Hour will sound tonight! Members elsewhere in the world, China and Argentina,  for example, should keep time differences in mind: Happy Hour time is CEST!

Cindy just broke the news that we’ve won the prestigious ChinICT Rising Star award. XING Country Manager Dr. Song attended the summit in Beijing last week and introduced XING with a short presentation. The expert committee has selected the companies upon four criteria: market adequacy, profit model, financial backing, innovation in terms of technology and market approach. Congrats from all of us in Hamburg, Barcelona and Istanbul to the entire XING China team!

PS: The conference ChinICT is the largest meeting centered around the most innovative and fastest-growing IT rising stars in Asia.

Our Marketing team has come up with yet another not-to-be-missed promotion for the next few weeks. From today until June 1st, ALL members in Germany and Austria will be able take advantage of the BestOffers bonus program – usually only available to XING Premium Members – where they can benefit from special offers and uniquely low rates from our partner companies. Make sure you make the most of all these offers over the next ten days!

And as an extra bonus: We'll also be giving away 25 great prizes, including iPhones, laptops and beamers, to selected members. Click here to take part in the competition.

Good luck!

Yesterday saw the second AGM take place in the history of our company. The meeting was held at the exhibition hall convention center in the Schnelsen district of Hamburg, here in Germany. The turn-out at the event was very pleasing, with shareholders accounting for a total of over 67% of the share capital attending. Here’s a quick overview of all the motions covered on yesterday’s agenda, and the percentage of votes in favour:

Ratification of the acts of the Executive Board - 99.99 %
Ratification of the acts of the Supervisory Board - 99.99 %
Appointment of auditors - 99.99 %
Authorization to acquire own shares - 99.99 %
Resolution on the creation of new authorized capital - 97.08 %
Resolution on the creation of contingent capital - 99.26 %

Lars twittered hourly status reports, becoming the first CEO of a public company to twitter directly from an AGM.
Here’s the XING team hard at work in the AGM back office:

Click here to find all information concerning the AGM, including the speech by our CEO.

Hmm…who in my network is working in Budapest? I'm fairly sure I don't know anyone there. A click later, and I know better: Michael from my former company is now working in Hungary. What a surprise! And look here: James seems to have moved to Sydney! So. How does this work?

Today we will release a new map view of your professional network. Now you can display the business addresses of your professional contacts – at least those who've allowed their geographic position to be displayed – on a world map. Just navigate to your Address Book and click on ‘Map’ in the second level navigation. This way you get a good idea of how your contacts are spread out around the globe. You can zoom in and out, hide groups of contacts, filter your old MBA class (provided you've tagged them in your Address Book), and so on.

So just by zooming and scrolling through the map, one discovers a new dimension of the business network. It is certainly fun and very addictive. But it creates value as well! The map view (based on Google Maps) gives you background knowledge about your network: Which of my old business acquaintances could I meet with in Chicago next week when I am there for a conference? Where in the world are my contacts at my partner company located? You can find out in a jiffy with the new map view.

At first, you might wonder what's to be gained by mapping your contacts. Apart from the reasons above, I think this is an excellent opportunity to innovate. Just by actually taking this first step, you'll find out what more you could do! Meshing location data and social networking data definitely opens up new possibilities in value creation. I can't wait to see what's next.

... and now I have to zoom around a little bit more.

Today Microsoft announced the German launch of its new Internet Explorer 8 beta 1, and we’re proud to report that XING is among the initial launch partners. The new Internet Explorer comes with two new great functions, “WebSlices” and “Activities”. Just in time for the launch, we have made sections of the XING website available as Webslices (visitors to my profile, messages and contacts to confirm). We’ve also decided to offer the XING keyword search as an “Activity” integrated into IE8.

First, to the “WebSlices”: Users of the new internet explorer can keep track of new users that have visited their profile or of new messages or contact request that have arrived, just by clicking on the tab at the top of the page.

What’s more, the XING “Activity” allows IE8 users to highlight any keyword on any website and do a XING search by clicking their right mouse key – choose “Find on XING” and you will get the number of XING search results that match your key word.

You may have noticed that XING was temporarily offline earlier on this afternoon. We have analyzed and solved the problem which occurred during enhancement of our platform's performance and are pleased to report that it has now been fixed and that the platform is fully operational once again. We apologize for any inconvenience.

Ok, it can’t beat the Hilton billboard in Vienna, but it is impressive, too: The XING blow-up we designed for our office façade in Hamburg spans no less than three whole floors. It’s our way of celebrating having reached the important 5 million member mark (and gives part of the team a convenient sun shield at the same time ;).

This goes out to you – our members - and again thank you for creating such a fantastic and active community.

Hooray! Today we started our outdoor campaign in Vienna with a huge 640 sq. meter billboard in the Vienna Hilton Complex. The billboard was actually due to be mounted on Tuesday but a sudden snowstorm meant that we had to postpone the attempt by a day. Yesterday, however the weather was on our side and we managed to mount the billboard in just under 4 hours!

We were sitting on hot coals waiting for the first reactions to come in – and we’ve had a great response so far. The first blog response came from mobile2null who saw the billboard on his way home. If you don’t have the chance to stop-over in Vienna (fantastic city – and I’m not just saying that coz my boss is Austrian) – have a look at the pics and check out the following online responses:
horizont.net: Xing will Österreicher überzeugen
wuv.de: Xing macht sich in Österreich breit
bessergehtsimmer.at: Xing umgarnt Wien mit Riesenplakat

You can find more information on our marketing campaign in Austria in our German press release.

Yesterday the World Economic Forum announced Lars as a Young Global Leader.

Well done boss, we´re very proud of what you´ve achieved!!!

Your XING-Team

Ever since so many of my Hamburg colleagues have discovered the "office toys” that make work that little bit easier and enjoyable, I  haven’t been able to keep catchy tunes out of my head.

Just recently our new “colleague in the box” caught my I eye for the first time and I couldn’t help thinking of that 80s classic hit:

… Am I living in a box am I living in a cardboard box
am I living in a box am I living in a cardboard box
am I living in a box …

And once I’d seen another colleague’s new “office pet” I couldn’t get “round, round baby round, round” out of my head for the rest of the day.

It’s amazing how many musical hits brighten up  an average day at the office.

On that note – XING it … ;-)

P.S. “The rocket man” is the perfect anthem for December’s shop favorite. The “desk accessory” was completely sold out, but is now back in stock … ;-)

Robert says:

XING just entered the official premiere league of Web localization – and best of all, we’re the only social networking site to make the grade.

A January Netcraft survey estimated 155,583,825 Websites on the Net last month, so we’re pretty proud to make it to the global TOP 20 Websites! Here’s the definitive list of localization experts (you might recognize some of the other names):

We’re glad to be recognized for being ahead of the game. Whilst the likes of Facebook and MySpace are now starting to think pretty late in the day on a multilingual level, XING recognized the importance of high-quality localization way back at its founding in 2003, and has produced 100% of its content in no less than 16 different languages ever since.

This impressive feat involves a massive on-going operation and constant quality assurance. So a great big thanks must go to everyone involved in the localization process – from programmers and engineers to the production team, our localization company Beluga Linguistics, and last but not least the translators and proofreaders themselves. Well done!

You can find out more about the The 2008 Web Globalization Report Card here.

This week we launched a XING application for Facebook! (Yay!) If you remember we launched mynetworkvalue.com a few months ago. This little website calculates the value of your business network and converts it into hard cash. mynetworkvalue.com has been spreading like wildfire in the World Wide Web. To date over 58,000 users have taken the test and over 120 blogs have picked up on it, so we decided to pour more oil in the fire by developing a mynetworkvalue application for Facebook.

We’re really excited about this little gadget. Facebook users can now install the network value application and can calculate the value of their professional network. Users can compare results with friends, challenge colleagues to take the test, download cool buttons for their own blogs or websites and become a fan of the application for everyone to see. Once the test has been completed a nifty graphic appears on the profile page informing visitors how they fared and the News Feeds can help spread the word within an individual network.



We’re delighted to bring mynetworkvalue.com to Facebook users and are looking forward to any feedback we get.  Check out the value of your business network here!

Good news for those who use XING with Windows Vista and Outlook 2007: the XING Plugin now supports the latest version of Microsoft. With just a few clicks, members can compare which of their personal contacts are already on XING. The process is simple: Your XING Address Book is imported into Outlook, where all of your XING contacts (including contact details and picture) are then accessible. The Plugin also allows you to search all of XING for people in your Outlook contact list, and to invite anyone who is not already a member of XING. The Plugin makes it quick and easy to expand your network. To get the XING Plugin, go to the "Download" section (the button is on the top right of every page). While you're at it, you can also download the XING Searchbox, which integrates a XING search function directly into your web browser. 

P.S.: As always, privacy protection is at a premium: your contact list data will only be used for a single comparison, and XING will never save or view your personal contact data. What's more, XING uses the latest, most comprehensive data protection and encoding technology to make sure no one else does, either.

Organizer Klaus Eck kicked off today’s Social Web Breakfast at the East Hotel in Hamburg with a little exercise to get things going: Guests were asked to introduce themselves in a few words and let everyone know what it was they last purchased online. From airline tickets through to carnival costumes and Jamie Oliver woks – The answers that came up included just about everything you could possibly think of! So where was this all leading? Well, today’s topic at the event (which alternates between Hamburg, Munich, Cologne, Frankfurt and Berlin) was: How can communities be effectively developed and adapted to promote sales processes?

Smatch.com – a Web 2.0 recommendation platform for fashion, home and lifestyle, has been asking itself this very question since last fall. Project Manager Nele Henning spoke the audience through how sales processes can be boosted through recommendation and members’ tastes.  She demonstrated with the platform how product search and selection in the realm of eCommerce can work better with the help of Web 2.0 technologies and communities. The inevitable (and legitimate) question which came up in the round of Q&As afterwards was whether users will really be willing to create a profile for the umpteenth time when they already have so many online logins as it is. Her answer: There will always be niches for specialist communities, where people with the same particular interests will want to find each other – the case in point being fashionistas. Today the lively discussion could also be followed on Twitter for the very first time.

 
We’ve just announced the acquisition of cember.net, the leading online business network in Turkey. This is great news for all of us, but especially for the Turkish speakers in the XING world, as cember.net with its 280,000 members is the largest professional network of its kind in Turkey, one of the fastest growing national economies in Europe. I’d like to take the opportunity to give my heartfelt thanks to the entire team in Turkey for their tremendous efforts in the past years, especially founders of the network Çağlar Erol and Nihan Colak Erol, and to welcome them to the XING Team. Looking forward to seeing you all in Istanbul!

cember.net XING'e katılıyor
Şu sıralarda, Türkiye’deki önder iş dünyası ağı olan cember.net'i devraldığımızı duyurduk. Bu, hepimiz için büyük bir haber, fakat özellikle XING dünyasının Türkçe konuşan üyeleri için önemli; çünkü cember.net 280.000 üyesiyle, Avrupa’nın en hızlı büyüyen ulusal ekonomilerinden birine sahip olan Türkiye'de kendi türündeki en büyük profesyonel iletişim ağı. Bu vesileyle Türkiye'deki bütün ekibe ve özellikle portalin kurucuları Çağlar Erol ile Nihan Çolak Erol’a geçmiş yıllardaki olağanüstü çabaları için yürekten teşekkürlerimi iletir, kendilerine XING ekibine hoşgeldiniz derim. Hepinizi İstanbul’da görebilmek ümidiyle!

Since Saturday January 5, 2008, no online ads have been featured on any profiles of Premium Members. This is in response to the continuing feedback XING has received, which clearly shows that the majority of our Premium members do not wish to have online ads on their profiles when viewed by basic members. We very much regret that we misjudged the situation. And for this we would like to offer our apologies.

This move means that Premium Members are exempt from all advertising on the XING platform – both in terms of their own profile page and their general user experience on the XING platform. Basic members will continue to see ad banners on their start page, on profiles of other basic members, the search and search results pages, and other parts of the platform.

Why has XING introduced online ads for basic members?
Besides member subscriptions (Premium Memberships) and eCommerce (Marketplace and PremiumWorld), XING will also be driven from now on by the additional revenue generated from online advertising. You might be thinking: How is this relevant to me as a member? The answer is pretty simple: Just as you have invested time and effort into your network of people on XING, we have to invest in delivering services in a reliable, secure and effective way, with new and powerful features. More revenue equals more opportunities to invest in the technology, the platform, the team and ultimate in serving you. All members will benefit here. We will continue to work towards making both Premium Membership and basic membership more attractive: Basic members will be able to benefit from select features currently reserved for Premium Members only. Meanwhile we will be launching new exclusive services and functions for Premium Members in addition to their exemption from online ads.

Which data will be used for online advertising on XING?
We plan to make advertising on the platform as relevant as possible for our members. Targeted online ads have not yet been launched on XING, but this is planned for the future. This targeting process will be based solely on members’ anonymous data, such as their gender, city, or age. Personal data, i.e. specific information that can be attributed to a specific individual, will not be forwarded to any third parties at any time – either now or in the future. It goes without saying that this includes all personal information such as members’ addresses or cellphone and landline numbers.

As the operator of the XING platform, we are responsible for ensuring that our members’ data is treated securely and remains protected in accordance with our Privacy Policy. We are acutely aware of just how important it is to our members that their data is treated confidentially at all times.

The placement of online ads on XING adheres of course to all German and European data protection legislation and guidelines.

XING members have full control over their data security and privacy settings – and will continue to do so in future. Meanwhile advertising for basic members on the XING platform will help us to continue improving our services for all members.

Dear Members,

When you’re always striving for the best, sometimes things get a little worse before they get better.

In the last couple of days we have received a great deal of member feedback and witnessed much heated discussion regarding one aspect of our newly launched advertising system. As a non-Premium Member you´ll know that online ads have been featured on some pages including other members’ profile pages since mid-December. Of course, as a Premium Member you currently don't see ads on any XING pages. The discussion arose because, frankly, we didn’t think of everything in advance. What happened was that non-Premium users were seeing ads when they visited Premium Members’ profile pages. The “oops” on our part was that we failed to offer our Premium Members the chance to opt out of (deactivate) having ads displayed alongside of their profiles. Our members objected to this, and we acted to change this as soon as we heard. It has taken us 24 hours to implement after announcing the change, and this option is now available in Premium Members’ individual settings.

At XING we strive for constant innovation for our members. Many features in today's social software landscape were first introduced by us as a direct result of listening to member requests. Many other features that have entered common use in the industry have sooner or later been launched on XING. It's a key challenge to address certain changes within all social communities in a way that suits and informs all members at the same time with the same information. Especially in an increasingly global environment with cultural and regulatory differences acting 'across borders', so to speak.

Last year, we launched 51 releases, over 20 major new features, and loads of smaller changes and adoptions. With this kind of development run rate and innovation, it is sometimes easy to slip up when entering new, unchartered territory. Despite our sincerest intentions and our intensive efforts to predict all possible use cases of any new features we develop, we are not always able to predict the way a feature will be received by our millions of members. As soon as we realize that large numbers of members take issue with something, it becomes a priority straight away for all of us in the XING team.

We pride ourselves on both speed and security at XING. That is why we’re able to implement changes within hours after a release – as in this case. Of course with millions of members depending on us it sometimes - in more complex cases - takes a day or two to come up with a solution everyone is happy with. Sometimes we put in a temporary fix until a more durable solution can be coded. Overall we’ve chosen to implement more releases instead of less. We deliver updates and alterations every week, sometimes small changes or new features, sometimes bigger launches, and this gives us the opportunity to develop and implement features faster for you. This brings added benefits for you, and increased challenges for us, which occasionally mean that we don’t get it quite perfect first time round. 

In 2008, XING will be driven by three different revenue pillars: member subscriptions, e-commerce (different Marketplaces, PremiumWorld) and advertising. You might be thinking: Why should I care about this and how is it relevant to me? The answer is pretty simple: Just as you have invested time and effort into your network of people on XING, we have to invest in delivering the service in a reliable, safe and effective way, with new and powerful features. More revenue, equals more opportunities to invest in the technology, the platform, the team and ultimate in serving you. We´re currently planning for some of today's Premium features to perhaps become available to non-Premium users in future, since we’re now able to cover more of the costs with advertising. At the same time, we will of course certainly be launching more brand new Premium-only features. Over 100 people at XING in three different locations are already working to give our members added value – and the good news is that we want to increase this number again in 2008, in turn improving the service you enjoy.

Our company exists because of our members. We are and always will be member-orientated. After all, the happier our members are, the happier our investors are. So it is a big deal for us when some of our members are unhappy.

This week many of our members felt that they were not adequately informed about the introduction of advertising on the XING platform. We did in fact announce that we would be introducing online ads on 16 November in the “XING news” displayed on your start page. A press release announcing the advertising launch was also published on 12 November. Having said that, we should have communicated in a clearer way precisely where the online ads would be appearing on the platform.

“XING news” - directly on your start page when you log in – is always the best place to look to find information about the most important developments at XING. We would urge you to take a look at this news on a regular basis – it is our way of keeping you in the know. This blog is an important channel, too. We have become more proactive in our communication, informing our members increasingly in advance about upcoming developments, hence giving you more time to get familiar with new features, ask us questions and give suggestions (this was particularly the case with the "Whats new in my network" feature, where we did a better job of implementation based on member feedback regarding privacy). Last but not least, we have a great team of people working in our community and support department, who are on call to take direct care of you and are always willing to get in touch and respond to your questions as quickly as they possibly can.   
There is always room for improvement, and we're always looking for solutions and improvements to the way we work. And in future we want to work even more closely with you, the XING members, to ensure that our new feature releases continue to please as many of our members as possible. We have started to launch beta groups on the live site. We are also further staffing up our quality & testing team.

We are always pleased to receive, listen and react to feedback from members. Not only that: We depend on it. Because ultimately we only succeed as a business in the long run if we ensure that we satisfy our members. And that’s why you matter to us.

Lars Hinrichs

Update:
From now on, Premium Members’ profiles will not feature any form of online advertising. You can find out more here. 

Last week we welcomed Julián from Neurona up to Hamburg for a visit. We jumped at the chance to interview him, asking him about his experiences with Neurona and Spanish networking practices. Here he describes his personal attitude towards communities, and explains how Neurona members can benefit from XING.

Julián, you studied theatre and cinema. How did you end up at networking for professionals after such dramatic beginnings?
Almost by chance really, although I was drawn in this direction by my interest in technology. With cinema you automatically become interested in digital video, then in 3D and very soon after Flash.  Indeed , I widened my scope, becoming interested in everything to do with web concepts. When I first began working at Neurona, the challenge was to widen the scope of the “Former Colleagues’ Communities”, developing it and moving it in the direction of business networking as we know it today.

What do these two fields have in common?
Maybe not that much;) The fact is that I was always very interested in the ways in which people interact; the dynamics of it. And the ability I had to strike up relationships with people by means of stimuli. Creating features, modifying them in response to feedback, a continuous flow of actions and reactions, it's something I find really exciting. I suppose that in some ways you could say that the two fields are quite parallel in that respect.

How did these experiences help you to develop Neurona?
I could give you quite a complex answer, but basically it is the ability to always keep listening to the end user. There are distinctions, which aren’t always clear to people, between what actually goes on on your site, what you think is going on and what you want to be going on. I would like to think that I have developed a clear idea of all that. Obviously, my experience as a small-scale entrepreneur in advertising and online communities has helped a lot, but that’s another story ;)

How would you characterize Spanish networking habits? How do they differ from those in  Latin America and the rest of the world ?
In a way, professional networking can be seen as a personal component of professional life. A lot of emphasis is placed on how things are done; there is a greater need for interaction compared to people from English-speaking countries, for example, who are usually more practical and direct. More importance is also placed on a trusted group, whether we have friends or colleagues in common and what people who already know you think of you. As for Latin Americans, there’s maybe a mixture of influences. You can see the influence of the US, and in spite of the emphasis on interpersonal aspects of business relationships, these are quite direct, and speed and effectiveness are important.

Globally,  native Spanish speakers now outnumber native English speakers. The Spanish economy is also growing at quite a rapid pace. What role does social networking  play in all this?
It’s true that it’s already the third largest language on the Internet. There is a sizeable growth, and an additional factor, which is very important, is that Internet penetration in this market is still very low compared with other countries. Whatever happens, there’s still a long way to go. At the same time I believe that networking will grow as a channel for everything happening on the Internet and will continue to grow exponentially.

Neurona is the largest platform for professional contacts in Spain and Latin America. How did you manage to become the market leader?
With a great deal of hard work! As well, I think, as taking into account various factors which were very well received by our users. Firstly, we have always believed that networking is something which affects all professional industries and levels. At first our targeting was restricted to the professional world but that has enabled us to reach a sufficient critical mass in a much shorter time than usual for a site with these characteristics. Secondly, we applied a model which was very appropriate to networking. First you have to give, the more the better, but with time you then reap the rewards. We have always worked with sincere purposes in mind, trying to ensure that the platform functions in the best possible way and with the best possible features for our users. And finally, another golden rule for networking: treat your users as you would like to be treated. We have a very close relationship with our members. In fact we use the platform in exactly the same way as anyone else, and this means that we are one living community in a way, where the needs of users are treated like our own, in the first person.

What benefits can XING bring to Neurona users? How will Neurona users be better off?
The first meetings we had with the XING team were quite amazing. It was very funny to realize just how many things we had in common, how similar our situation was in terms of what our future requirements and functionalities would be. We are working to adapt some Neurona functionalities to be used by XING, but on the other hand there are areas which Neurona has not been able to develop completely, where XING already has a breadth of experience. I think that internationalization, events in the offline world, and many other aspects of XING, can really enhance the users’ final experience. I’m sure that when everything goes to plan we have the potential to create a really powerful tool at the core and then our two platforms can develop around that.

What has the Neurona team been developing recently?
Well, we have been working very closely with the XING team. As I mentioned before, we want to make as large a contribution as possible so that users will see the benefits from the best aspects of both platforms. Meanwhile....we keep on growing. In August we beat our own record and reached the symbolic figure of 1  million users and are still growing at a fantastic pace.

Julián nos visitó en Hamburgo y aprovechamos la ocasión para entrevistarlo y pedirle que nos hable de sus experiencias en Neurona y otros aspectos que despiertan nuestra curiosidad, como es el comportamiento típico de los networkers hispanohablantes. Nos describió la relación que mantiene con la comunidad y comentó las ventajas que XING puede aportar para los usuarios de Neurona.

Julián, estudiaste teatro y dirección de cine, ¿cómo se llega desde el teatro al networking para profesionales?   
De una manera casi casual, llevándome por el interés en la tecnología. Del cine pasé al vídeo digital, de ahí a 3D, multimedia y en seguida al flash. Rápidamente amplié el abanico hacia todo lo que significaban los conceptos web.  Cuando entré en Neurona lo hice con el reto de ampliar el concepto que tenía el site de "Comunidades de Antiguos Compañeros" hacia el "Networking Profesional" tal como lo conocemos hoy.

¿Qué tienen en común estos dos campos? 
Puede que no mucho ;) La verdad es que siempre me interesaron mucho las dinámicas de las conductas de las personas. La capacidad de relacionarme con ellas mediante estímulos. Crear funcionalidades, modificarlas de acuerdo al feedback y tener una corriente continua de acción y reacción. Es algo realmente excitante. Supongo que, de alguna manera, podríamos considerarlo bastante paralelo en ese sentido.

¿En qué modo te ayudaron estas experiencias a desarrollar Neurona? 
Es muy sutil, pero posiblemente lo principal es saber escuchar al receptor, al usuario. Hay unas líneas que no siempre tienes claro entre lo que pasa en tu site, lo que crees que pasa y lo que deseas que esté pasando. Me gusta creer que he desarrollado una buena percepción de todo esto. Evidentemente mi historia como pequeño emprendedor en publicidad y comunidades online también me ha ayudado mucho, pero eso ya es otra historia ;)

¿En tu opinión, ¿qué es lo que caracteriza el comportamiento del networker español? ¿En qué se diferencia del latinoamericano? 
De alguna manera se entiende mucho el networking profesional como las relaciones personales en el mundo del trabajo, que se le da mucho valor a cómo haces las cosas, que necesita más interrelación que por ejemplo el anglosajón, que suele ser más práctico y directo. Por otra parte se da mucho valor al círculo de confianza, si tenemos gente en común o no y saber cómo te consideran las personas que ya te conocen. El caso del latinoamericano, puede que sea una mezcla, se nota la influencia de Estados Unidos y, a pesar de que también se basa mucho en el trato y en las maneras, es bastante directo; busca velocidad y practicidad.

Los hablantes nativos de español ya superan en número a los de inglés. Además, la economía española está creciendo a un ritmo considerable. ¿Qué papel puede desempeñar el networking social en todo esto? 
Lo cierto es que ya es el tercer idioma en Internet. Hay un crecimiento importante y también un factor muy a tener en cuenta, la penetración de Internet en estos mercados es aún muy baja si la comparamos con otros países y en cualquier caso le queda aún mucho recorrido.  A la vez creo que el Networking será cada vez más un aglutinador de todo lo que pasa en Internet e irá creciendo exponencialmente.

Neurona es la plataforma de contactos profesionales más grande de España y Latinoamérica. ¿Cómo habéis conseguido liderar el mercado? ¿Con mucho esfuerzo?
Bueno, además de eso creo que hemos tenido algunas cosas en cuenta que han sido bien recibidas por nuestros usuarios. Por un lado siempre hemos creído que el networking es algo que afecta a todas, absolutamente todas las capas profesionales. Partimos de un target sólo ceñido al mundo profesional y eso nos ha permitido que la masa crítica necesaria para que funcione un site de estas características sea conseguida de manera mucho más rápida. Por otro lado pusimos en práctica un modelo que creo que es el mismo que funciona justamente en el networking. Primero has de dar, y cuanto más mejor, con el tiempo ya recibirás las compensaciones. Siempre hemos trabajando muy sinceramente buscando que la plataforma funcione de la mejor manera posible y con las mejores funcionalidades para nuestros usuarios. Y por último otra regla del networking, trátalos como quieres que te traten a ti. Tenemos una relación muy cercana con nuestros usuarios, de hecho nosotros somos usuarios de la plataforma como uno más, eso hace que de alguna manera seamos una gran comunidad viva, donde las necesidades de los usuarios son entendidas en primera persona.

¿Qué ventajas ofrece XING a los usuarios de Neurona? ¿De qué se van a beneficiar los usuarios de Neurona?
Fueron muy curiosas las primeras reuniones que tuvimos con el equipo de XING. Era divertido ver cuántas cosas en común teníamos y sobre todo, lo alineados que estábamos en cuanto a las próximas necesidades, funcionalidades, etc. etc. Estamos trabajando en adoptar algunas funcionalidades de Neurona en XING, por otra parte hay zonas donde Neurona no llegaba a desarrollarse completamente y que XING tiene mucho camino recorrido. Creo que todo lo que es el mundo offline, la gran implantación en el resto del mundo y muchas otras cosas que tiene XING pueden mejorar mucho la experiencia final del usuario. Sin duda, al final, si hacemos las cosas bien ;), podemos crear una herramienta realmente potente que vertebre cada vez más todo ese potencial que tenemos entre las dos plataformas.

¿Qué está haciendo el equipo de Neurona últimamente? 
Bueno, estamos trabajando mucho con el equipo de XING. Como te comentaba antes queremos aportar lo máximo para que los usuarios se vean beneficiados de lo mejor de cada una de las plataformas. Mientras tanto...pues seguimos creciendo, el mes de agosto batimos el record y superamos la mítica cifra del millón (1.000.000) de nuevos usuarios cada mes.

Susan says
When Horacio E. Coronado strolls through the doors of XING’s Hamburg headquarters, he calls out a friendly hola and buenos dias to everyone in his path. Though Spanish has always been a widely-spoken language here, recent developments have elevated the world’s second-most-spoken-language to XING’s langue de rigeur. (The XING Group Hispano-Alemán <-> Deutsch Spanischsprachiger suggests that this may be a German-wide phenomenon.) Evidence includes the surge in native Spanish-speakers in our offices: Spanish-speakers Coronado and Daniel Benjumea Martinez recently joined the Members Relations team and Joaquin Moreno moved to Hamburg to serve as a TLC team leader.  Daniel Silva, Antonino Avarello and Gloria Claros have been with XING for a while now. Learning Spanish, furthermore, has become a major XING pastime; once-a-week, in-house courses are packed every week.

The rising popularity of Spanish at XING is hardly a surprise. The language is the world’s second-most-widely-spoken tongue and, as an international, multilingual platform, it only makes sense for XING to take an interest. The more concrete reason, however, is XING’s purchase of two Spain-based networking platforms (eConozco and Neurona) last June. The aim of the move was to welcome one million or so Spanish-speaking members who live in Barcelona, Mexico City and everywhere in between to XING. eConozco’s members have already moved to Hamburg and Neurona’s members are on their way soon. Neurona team members, in fact, will visit XING this week to devise final plans for the “migration”.

Community Relations has played a major role in the Spanish love affair. One of Ulrike Gruel’s many tasks, for example, is to help coordinate the smooth move of Groups from the two Spanish platforms to the multilingual XING. She and Daniel Silva have already successfully overseen the integration of eConozco Groups and are currently working on the details for the Neurona shift. Thanks to their hard work (which also includes taking part in Spanish courses) Spanish will play a decidedly more prominent role in the XING Community. Indeed Groups like the Barcelona Community, Mexico Business Network and Negocios de Latinoamerica reveal that all things related to the Spanish-speaking world are caliente topics. If this trend continues, it is only a matter of time before hola replaces moin as the greeting of choice at XING.

An intriguing new feature went live today: “What’s new in my network”, a new infobox on the XING start page, gives you live updates on the latest developments within your own personal network. After deliberating about what best to call this new infobox, we went for “What’s new in my network” because that’s exactly what it shows. From today onwards XING members will be able to see at a glance whenever a direct contact joins a new company, gets promoted, connects to a new contact or edits their profile data.

I have to say I’m already quite addicted. Now the first thing to do after logging in to XING each morning is to check what’s been going on in my network. The feature is completely user-configurable – both in terms of the information you wish to be informed about and the updates you wish your contacts to see. You can configure your privacy settings here.

The new feature is also available as part of the XING Powersearch and as an RSS feed. And even on the move you won’t miss out on the latest news: It’s accessible on any Internet-enabled cellphone, including the iPhone, PDA and Blackberry.

Hazel says

mynetworkvalue.com has been online now for about 3 weeks and to date over 21,000 people have taken the Network Value test!

This topic has also been fiercely discussed in blogs and forums in all four corners of the globe. Some articles made us laugh, some caused raised eyebrows, some made us throw our hands above our heads and some got us nodding our heads in agreement.
Here’s a short recap of some of the best snippets from your discussions:

In Germany, Robert Basic kick-started the discussion with his basic thinking blog. His article entitled “I’m a Cheap Networker” certainly got things fired up. Check it out here [Only available in German].

The career bible; best practice business blog and synaxon blog seemed to polarize the users somewhat – some found the test interesting, some felt deeply inspired and motivated and others shouted “show me the money”.

It wasn’t long until the site was picked up across the pond in various US blogs. Om Malik from Gigaom.com got the ball rolling. He admitted that his network value - although quite high - faded in comparison to Robert Scoble aka Facebook gazillionare. The best line has to be from Alex though: [The networkvalue test is]…”a great mental masturbation exercise.” Oooh err!

The site even got picked up in blogs in France, Spain, Italy and Holland to name but a few.

All in all – the website has got you guys thinking about your network and its value. The value of a network is not determined by quantity alone - it doesn't matter whether you have 100 contacts or 500 - it's the quality and heterogeneity that counts.

By the way it’s worth paying the site another visit – we’ve now integrated some nifty buttons. Take a look here
 

For those of you who are interested in reading more - here’s a few references that blogged our site (isn’t Technorati great?):

Webthinker
The Archer Pelican
myKEY IT
Andrey Golub Weblog
Social Networks around the world
Handelskraft (only in German)
Modes d’emploi (only in French)