XING

XING SE
Type of business Societas Europaea
Type of site
 Professional network service
Available in Simplified Chinese, Dutch, English, Finnish, French, German, Hungarian, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, Swedish, Turkish
Traded as FWB: O1BC
Founded August 2003 (2003-08)
Hamburg, Germany
Headquarters Hamburg, Germany
Key people Dr. Thomas Vollmoeller (CEO), Stefan Winners (Chairman of the supervisory board)
Revenue
Total assets €170.4 million (end 2016)[2]
Total equity €69.9 million (end 2016)[2]
Employees 961 (2016)[2]
Website www.xing.com
Alexa rank Negative increase 1020 (December 2015)[3]
Registration Required
Launched November 2003

XING (named openBC/Open Business Club until 17 November 2006) is a European career-oriented social networking site for enabling a small-world network for professionals. Available interface languages include Dutch, English, French, German, Italian, Spanish, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Simplified Chinese and Turkish. By displaying how each member is connected to any other member, it visualizes the small-world phenomenon.

The platform offers personal profiles, groups, discussion forums, event coordination, and other common social community features. Basic membership is free, but many core functions, like searching for people with specific qualifications or messaging people to whom one is not already connected, can only be accessed by the premium members. Premium membership comes at a monthly fee from €6.35 to €9.95 depending on the billing interval you choose and the country you are from.[4] The platform uses https and has a rigid privacy and no-spam policy. XING provides its paying members very easy email access to any members.

XING has a special Ambassador program for each city or region around the world with a substantial constituency. The Ambassadors hold local events that promote the use of social networking as a business tool, letting members introduce business ideas to one another, and get to know each other on a personal level.

XING competes with the American platform LinkedIn and the European Viadeo[5] for social networking among businesses.[6]

XING also offers the system for closed communities, called Enterprise groups with their own access paths and interface designs. The platform serves as the infrastructure for corporate groups, including IBM, McKinsey, Accenture and others.[7]

About 76% of all pageviews come from Germany, 90% from the D-A-CH area (Germany, Austria and Switzerland).[8]

As of September 15, 2017 XING has changed its legal status to become a Societas Europaea.[9]

History

  • OPEN Business Club AG was founded in August 2003 in Hamburg, Germany as a German limited liability company by Lars Hinrichs.[10] The platform was officially launched on 1 November 2003.[11] It was renamed from OpenBC to XING on 17 November 2006.
  • It gained much attention in German media and is widely used as a business network in German-speaking countries (DACH Region). Membership from other countries throughout Europe and the Far East helped the network platform grow to more than 1.5 million members in July 2006.[12]
  • In November 2009 German media group Hubert Burda Media acquired 25,1 % of XING and became main shareholder.[13][14][15]
  • In 2010 XING acquired online event management company Amiando [16]
  • In 2012 Burda increased its share above 50% [17]
  • Since 2012 XING is focusing on the German speaking market only.
  • In 2013 XING acquired Austrian e-recruiting company Kununu.[18]
  • In 2015 XING announced cooperation with eyeson [19] a cloud based Unified Communications solution nominated from Gartner Inc. as Cool Vendor in Unified Communications in 2017.[20][21]
  • In 2017 XING acquired global expat network InterNations[22] as well as Austrian recruitment company Prescreen.[23]

IPO

The company went public (IPO) on 7 December 2006 with an issue price of 30 Euros. The Open Business Club Stock Ticker symbol is O1BC.DE and its ISIN number is: DE000XNG8888. XING became the first Web 2.0 company to go public in Europe.[24]

XING Mobile

Xing.com Mobile allows users to access some of its functions using a mobile phone, PDA or smartphone. Standards supported: HTML 3.2, XHTML MP 1.0, WML 1.1.

XING plug-ins

Xing.com plugins are available for free download that allow contact synchronization with Lotus Notes, Microsoft Outlook,[25] Windows Address Book and Outlook Express. It also allows manual CSV File import–export and has a Firefox search plug-in.

Criticism

The company's official demeanour regarding name changes is problematic. If the circumstances leading to the change are not one of the most common, additional proof is demanded. These unusual cases are easily spotted by Xing, due to dedicated fields for data entry being present in case of marriage (maiden name) and academic titles. In case of transsexuals however, given names and gender will not be changed, unless medical expert evidence or court documents are provided, which offer proof of an assured medical diagnosis or file reference to a court ruling in regard to a name change case, respectively.[26][27] If the changes are carried out, birth names are removed, which is legally required, because any disclosure or investigation would be illegal under the purview of German law, as per Sec. 5 para. 1 and Sec. 10 para. 2 Transsexual Act.[26][27]

See also

References

  1. ↑ 2017 Record Xing Revenue Growth
  2. 1 2 3 4 Annual Report 2016
  3. ↑ "Xing.com Site Info". Alexa Internet. Retrieved 2014-11-15.
  4. ↑ Premium Account Upgrade, 18 March 2014
  5. ↑ The Economist Does local beat global in the professional-networking business?
  6. ↑ Move Over Silicon Valley, Here Come European Start-Ups By John Markoff, 24 January 2007, The New York Times, USA
  7. ↑ LinkedIn takes on Xing, or the other way around! by Carsten Cumbrowski, 29 January 2007, SearchEngineJournal.com
  8. ↑ http://linkedinsiders.wordpress.com/2012/02/12/linkedin-the-next-big-xing-businessnetzwerke-in-deutschland-2012/
  9. ↑ https://corporate.xing.com/en/newsroom/press-releases/meldung/new-legal-status-xing-to-become-a-european-company/
  10. ↑ Lars Hinrichs on Twitter.com
  11. ↑ Xing.com Q&A Archived 6 June 2007 at the Wayback Machine. Question 2. When was the company founded?
  12. ↑ Süddeutsche Zeitung, 2006-07-12 Archived December 1, 2006, at the Wayback Machine.
  13. ↑ "Burda wird Hauptaktionär von Xing". kress (in German). 2009-11-18. Archived from the original on 2009-11-21. Retrieved 2016-04-11.
  14. ↑ "XING: Hubert Burda Media neuer Hauptaktionär der XING AG". OnlinePresse.info. 2009-11-19. Archived from the original on 2009-11-23.
  15. ↑ Christof Schürmann: Xing im Visier. In: Wirtschaftswoche, 2012-03-17.
  16. ↑ Kaczmarek, Joel (2010-12-10). "Amiando gefühlt unter Wert verkauft: XING übernimmt für 10,35 Mio. Euro" (in German). Retrieved 2010-12-10.
  17. ↑ manager magazin: Medienhaus Burda hat Xing übernommen. Retrieved August 24, 2017
  18. ↑ "Xing übernimmt Karriere-Portal in Österreich" (in German). 2013-01-08. Retrieved 2017-08-24.
  19. ↑ Videokonferenz: Xing setzt auf steirisches Know-how By Markus Zottler, Jul 17, 2017, KleineZeitung, Graz, Austria
  20. ↑ Cool Vendors in Unified Communications, 2017, May 11, 2017, Gartner Inc.. Retrieved Aug, 24 2017
  21. ↑ eyeson: VisoCon Named a 2017 Cool Vendor by Gartner, July 31, 2017, CommsTrader. Retrieved Aug 25, 2017
  22. ↑ Xing acquires global expat network InterNations By Sara Seddon Kilbinger, Jul 13, 2017, AIM Group, Orlando, Florida
  23. ↑ Xing kauft Wiener Start-up Prescreen für 17 Millionen Euro (in German)
  24. ↑ Web 2.0 company Xing raises €35.7 million in IPO Archived 11 May 2007 at the Wayback Machine. by Graham Charlton, 12. Dec 2006, e-Consultancy.com
  25. ↑ Tutorial: Connecting Social Networks with Outlook (German)
  26. 1 2 Stock response of „Team Quality and Security“ of Xing AG to affected persons
  27. 1 2 Stock response of Head of Customer Service of Xing AG to affected persons
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