XING


XING is a Hamburg-based career-oriented social networking site, operated by New Work SE
The site is primarily focused on the German-speaking market, alongside XING Spain, and competes with the American platform LinkedIn.

Company history

OPEN Business Club AG was founded in August 2003 in Hamburg, Germany by Lars Hinrichs. Its official debut was 1 November 2003. It was renamed XING in November 2006.
In its early years the site pursued a global strategy, but since 2012 XING has focused on the German-speaking market, as 76% of all XING page views come from Germany and 90% come from the D-A-CH area.

Leadership

Lars Hinrich led the company as CEO until 2009, when he was succeeded by Stefan Groß-Selbeck. Current CEO Thomas Vollmoeller has served since 2012.

Number of users

As of April 2019, XING reported 16 million members, up from 10 million members in the D-A-CH area in March 2016, which at that time included 880,000 premium members.

Ownership and acquisitions

In November 2009 Hubert Burda Media acquired 25.1% of XING, becoming its main shareholder. In 2010 XING acquired online event management company Amiando, changing its name to XING EVENTS. In 2012 Burda increased its shareholding to over 50%. In 2013 XING acquired Austrian e-recruiting company Kununu. In 2015 XING announced a cooperation project with eyeson, a unified communications provider. In 2017 XING acquired global expat network InterNations and Austrian recruitment company Prescreen. In April 2019 XING paid €22 million for Honeypot, a Berlin-based IT job platform.
Proportion of holding
shareholder
54.84Burda Digital
5.04Oppenheimer Holdings
3.02Wasatch Advisors
2.98Union Investment
2.95DWS Investments
2.83Norges Bank
32.92free float

IPO

XING became the first Web 2.0 company to go public in Europe, debuting on 7 December 2006 at an issue price of 30 Euros per share.

Website

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. The platform uses https and has a rigid privacy and no-spam policy.
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.
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.
About 76% of all pageviews come from Germany, 90% from the D-A-CH area.
As of September 15, 2017 XING has changed its legal status to become a Societas Europaea.
If a user wishes to change their name, additional proof is demanded. In case of affirmation of gender for transgender people given names and gender will not be changed without medical testimony or provision of court documents confirming the person's transition in a medical or legal context. If gender is reassigned, birth names are removed, which is legally required, because any disclosure or investigation would be illegal under German law, as per Sec. 5 para. 1 and Sec. 10 para. 2 :de:Personenstandsgesetz |Transsexual Act.

Revenue

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, Windows Address Book and Outlook Express. It also allows manual CSV File import–export and has a Firefox search plug-in.

Recruitment

Since October 2007, XING has run a job marketplace for candidates and recruiters. Alongside fixed-price job ads, XING was one of the first German job boards to use a pay-per-click payment model, where the cost of an ad is based on user views.