Q&As
2. When was the company founded?
3. How many employees work for XING AG?
5. What legal form does XING have?
6. What products /services does XING offer?
7. How many members does XING have? How many of them are Premium Members?
8. What strategy is the XING AG following?
9. Is XING part of the Web 2.0 generation? What exactly is meant by Web 2.0?
10. How does XING differ from its competitors?
11. How has XING AG developed historically?
12. Who makes up the management of XING AG?
13. What sales figure was generated by XING AG in the last financial year?
14. Why have you decided to change the established name openBC to XING?
1. What is XING?
The online network XING is the European market leader in business networking. Business professionals use XING to search for and find useful contacts, important information and valuable new business, employees, jobs, clients and ideas. Measured by the activity levels of its members, XING is one of the leading websites for professional networking. The network has more than 8.3 million members (September 2009) and is available in 16 languages with online contacts in all sectors. The XING network can be accessed all over the world via Internet, all smart phones including the iPhone, PDAs and Blackberrys.
2. When was the company founded?
XING AG was founded in August 2003 as a German limited liability company by Lars Hinrichs. The platform was officially launched on November 1, 2003.
3. How many employees work for XING AG?
As of the end of September 2009, XING AG employed 266 employees from 27 nations.
4. Where is XING located?
XING AG is headquartered in Hamburg, Germany, and has local offices based in its key strategic growth markets.
5. What legal form does XING have?
XING AG is an “Aktiengesellschaft” (German company limited by shares).
6. What products /services does XING offer?
The web-based business network XING has become one of the leading professional online networking platforms. Business professionals use XING to find useful contacts, important information, new business opportunities, employees and ideas. In addition, XING offers its members professional tools for the management, security and updating of their contact networks.
As basic members, business professionals can build up their professional network free-of-charge on XING, as well as managing contacts, searching for employers and companies in a targeted way and then making contact with them. Specialists and managers can manage all of the data in their professional contacts in a simple and efficient manner, as XING provides members with an automatically up-to-date address book – updated by individual members themselves. Members’ own networks become a reference here, where their XING profile serves as a digital calling card.
Here are some of the benefits of basic membership on XING:
Planning your personal career with XING
As well as being an extremely useful tool for daily business, XING is also a valuable support for planning personal career paths. Members can find relevant job offers that might otherwise be difficult to find in the Jobs section, which are tailored to the information in their personal profile. They also see which jobs are currently on offer in their network and how they are connected to the person advertising the job. In contrast to traditional job portals, members are not actively seeking a new job. Rather, they are found by HR professionals. These recruiters also use XING, to locate specialists and managers who might not actively be looking for a new employer but who are open to new professional challenges in the long term. More than 40 thousand headhunters and HR professionals can currently be found on XING.
Creating your own groups and exchanging in a choice of 30,000+ expert groups
2 million members exchange with one another on the most diverse range of topics in the thousands of specialist groups on XING. Business professionals contribute to discussions here, make new contacts and gain access to a valuable pool of expert knowledge and to target groups that are relevant to their line of work.
Organizing your own events with a comprehensive set of features on XING
From business meetings in Shanghai and San Francisco to regular regional networking events in Hamburg and Hawaii – XING members meet up around the world to expand their network and to build on relations with their online contacts. They can use the Event tool to create and organize new events. They can invite contacts, manage guest lists in a professional way and promote their event. An info box also shows members which events their contacts are attending. In 2008 alone, more than 90,000 public and closed events were organized via XING by members for members.
XING Applications: Choosing from a wide range of business applications
At https://www.xing.com/opensocial XING members can download and install various applications for free to help them with tasks like organizing business trips, managing projects, exchanging files and getting current news. They can also use the usual XING features and functions with these tools. Members can use XING’s own applications, like Twitter Buzz und Ask XING, as well as applications offered by XING’s partner companies. This gives them more diverse options for using XING in their daily work. XING’s partners include Huddle.net, Doodle, Dopplr, Deutsche Welle, MindMeister, SlideShare, spreed, travelload, Tungle, sueddeutsche.de, Wallstreet:Online, WELT ONLINE und ZCOPE.
Advanced features for Premium Members
Many members take advantage of the fee-based Premium Membership for advanced features and functionalities. They can, for example, post job listings on XING and send as many XING messages as they wish to anyone in the network. They can use all the search options available, see who has visited their profile and profit from all the benefits of the “BestOffers” program. More than 662,000 members have already upgraded to Premium Membership and pay a monthly subscription fee of between €4.95 and €6.95.
7. How many members does XING have? How many of them are Premium Members?
XING is the leading European online business networking. As of September 30, 2009, the network had more than 8.3 million registered members. More than 662,000 of these members are paying Premium members (September 2009).
8. What strategy is the XING AG following?
The strategy of XING AG is focused on meeting the needs of its members. Each year, over half of all product innovations and new functions are implemented based on members’ wishes. Only by maintaining such a clear focus on customers can professional networks such as XING ensure long-term operational success. The reasoning behind this is clear: only by continually supplying members with relevant information at the right time can a network become an established part of daily business life, as XING has for its members. The results of frequent user surveys, increasing membership figures and impressive success stories ( corporate.xing.com/english/company/success-stories/ ) from members tell us that we are on the right track.
Our premise is that when members are particularly satisfied and active on the platform, they will become and remain Premium Members, and as such are prepared to pay a monthly fee for additional functions. In the future, XING AG plans on concentrating a large portion of its resources to build upon existing customer satisfaction levels, by developing new features and services and improving existing ones. An example of this process can be seen in the “Jobs” section. Since its introduction in October 2007, the job portal was improved over the course of 2008. In the latest of these innovations, a rating system was added to improve matching results for users. The highly scalable nature of all three business model and the underlying technical infrastructure enables XING AG to grow profitably. In the future, the Company intends to pursue the three business models implemented to date.
9. Is XING part of the Web 2.0 generation? What exactly is meant by Web 2.0?
Yes, XING AG is part of the Web 2.0 generation. The generic term Web 2.0 stands for networked and innovative online services where content can be determined in part by users themselves. The separation between users and providers is disappearing with Web 2.0 applications, where the focus is on communication between Internet users themselves. The sharp increase in broadband access has made it possible to develop these applications.
10. How does XING differ from its competitors?
We differ above all by the fact that we offer professional people worldwide a tailor-made performance package for online networking. The focus on the target group “professional people“ enables us to offer tailor-made functionality, thereby making networking and contact management easier for our members. Live events on certain topics complement the virtual networking on the platform. The high level of activity of XING members is one of our most important competitive advantages and demonstrates the level of value the network provides for members in their daily working lives: more than 90 % of Premium Members regularly log on to the platform (Source: XING AG).
11. How has XING AG developed historically?
2009
August:
The 8 million-member mark is reached, 3.4 million of which are based in the German-speaking world.
July:
The XING Partner Ecosystem launches with 16 OpenSocial apps developed by 13 partners
April:
Company Profiles is added to the range of features on offer to members
March:
Publication of the Annual Report 2008: Growing member numbers led to an 80 percent increase in revenues
February:
The company welcomes its 200th employee
January:
Lars Hinrichs is appointed to the Supervisory Board
Dr. Stefan Gross-Selbeck is appointed as the new CEO
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2008
December:
Acquistion of New York-based socialmedian Inc. enables technological jump on integrating business news for the members
November:
Publication of the Interim Report: Q3 2008 brings record results in member numbers, revenues and profits for the seventh consecutive time since the company’s IPO
September:
500,000 Premium Members mark is exceeded. No other business network in the world has more paying members
August:
Official XING Seminars introduced in Germany for companies and private individuals
April:
The integration of Google Maps allows members to view their personal network as a map display
February:
The 5 million member mark is reached
January:
Expansion of the company’s market leadership in Europe with the acquisition of cember.net, the foremost professional network in Turkey
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2007
November:
The platform is opened up to advertisers, creating a new source of income in addition to the company’s successful subscription-based business model
The company becomes an official launch partner of Google with the programming standard OpenSocial
Launch of the ‘What’s new in my network?’ feature, which keeps members informed about what’s going on in their personal network
Inclusion in the list ‘Europe’s 2007 high growth, job creating companies’ published by BusinessWeek in recognition of sustained growth and the creation of new jobs
September:
The 4 million member mark is reached
August:
Relaunch of the XING Mobile portal brings faster, more user-friendly navigation, as well as new features for all Internet-enabled cell phones
June:
Annual General Meeting votes in favor of renaming the company from OPEN Business Club AG to XING AG
Market leadership in Spain and Latin America reinforced by the acquisition of the contact network Neurona from the Spain-based Grupo Intercom Factory S.L.
May:
‘Marketplace’ (now XING Jobs) is launched on the platform with thousands of listed job openings.
April:
The 2 million member mark is reached
March:
Acquisition of eConozco, one of the leading Spanish contact networks for business professionals owned by the Spain-based Grupo Galenicom TI, S.L.
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2006
December:
Successful IPO as the first Web 2.0 company worldwide
November:
Relaunch enhances the user-friendliness and clarity of the platform thanks to a new look and the consolidation of content
September:
Platform renamed: openBC becomes XING
PremiumWorld (now BestOffers) launched, offering numerous "Members only" deals for Premium Members by partner companiesdeutsch/presse/pressemitteilungen/pressmitteilungen-detailansicht/article/openbc-startet-premiumworld/7/cfc904ada1/?tx_ttnews[pointer]=16
July:
Tagging is introduced to the platform, enabling members to classify and cluster their personal network
May:
The company is awarded the internationally renowned Red Herring Award, designed to recognize enterprises that play a leading role in innovation and technology
January:
The 1 million member mark is reached
The integration of Skype into the platform lets members make use of all functionality of the Internet telephony provider directly on XING
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2005
November:
125 million page impressions per month reached for the first time
October:
The company’s own Weblog ´openBlog´is launched
June:
The platform becomes the largest professional network in Europe with more than 500,000 members
January:
Turkish, Russian, Polish, Korean and Italian are added, increasing the total number of language versions to 16
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2004
Business Angels provide the company with Venture Capital in a new round of financing
December:
The platform becomes available in Hungarian, too
November:
The company is awarded the ‘Deutscher Internetpreis 2004’ by the German Federal Ministry for Economics and Labor (BMWA)
September:
Chinese becomes the tenth language version on the platform
August:
Platform languages expanded to include Japanese, Finnish, Dutch and Swedish
June:
Launch of the French and Portuguese language versions
March:
Launch of the Spanish language version
February:
Martin Bockelmann and Johannes Woll hold the first official XING event in Munich, Germany
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2003
December:
Launch of the very first groups on the platform
November:
Launch of the platform in German under the name openBC, the English language version of the platform follows in the same month
August:
Official founding of the company by Lars Hinrichs in Hamburg, Germany
12. Who makes up the management of XING AG?
XING AG is managed by a highly experienced and international management team. As CEO of the company, Dr. Gross-Selbeck heads Corporate Strategy, HR and Corporate Communications. He also manages Marketing, Sales & Products in Germany, Austria and Switzerland. As Chief Operating Officer, Burkhard Blum is responsible for International, Legal Affairs, Mergers and Acquisitions, Corporate Development and Market Development. As Chief Technical Officer, Michael Otto oversees ongoing technological development and the implementation of new functionalities on the XING platform. As CFO, Mr. Chu is responsible for the Controlling, Investor Relations, Accounting and Business Intelligence divisions. As Chief Commercial Officer, Dr. Helmut Becker is responsible for all Marketing and Sales activities.
13. What sales figure was generated by XING AG in the last financial year?
In the financial year 2008, XING AG generated revenues of 35.3 million euros and an EBITDA totalling 12.93 million euros. This equates to an EBITDA margin of approximately 37 percent.
14. Why have you decided to change the established name openBC to XING?
We decided in favour of a full relaunch of the design and the user interface, as well as the launch of a new brand name and logo. The new brand name and design contribute to the global nature of the network. With XING, we have selected a brand name which is understood in different cultures.
For members, navigation on the platform has become simpler and more intuitive as a result of the relaunch.
