Xing's New Features Not Worth Shelling Out For

Written by Steven Walling / July 16, 2009 3:30 PM / 13 Comments

Xing is one of the top business social networks in the market today, especially in Europe. But the new features they're touting for the paid Premium users are grossly underwhelming.

In general terms, the platform is solid. The free functionality is more than adequate for the kind of networking you'd do on LinkedIn or any other professional site. But we have a hard time imagining anyone eagerly laying down cash for the ability to upload their resume and get birthday reminders.

Xing is a serious contender among business social networks. This international public company, based in Germany, has more than 7 million users in 16 languages. 600,000 of those are already paying for Premium membership.

But even at the relatively cheap price of €6 a month, we can't imagine many new customers being interested in a paid service whose most-recently advertised feature enhancements are file uploading (limited to three) and Facebook-style birthday reminders. While it's certainly nice to be able to add your resume or CV to a business networking account or not forget the bosses' birthday, it's far from cutting edge.

If Xing wants to move in to more international markets outside Europe or make a play against LinkedIn, they're going to have to do better.

Comments

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i allready use xing,it's great,it's really helping me alot to promote my business

Posted by: gmpoint | July 16, 2009 4:04 PM

Actually Xing is very limited when you dont have a premium account. Especially the missing search functions, unable to send messages, no access to statistics or the address book are a real problem. So you can eighter go premium or switch to a more useful free sn.

Gruss
Bernd

Posted by: bernd.eckenfels.net | July 16, 2009 4:05 PM

Well, it depends on what standards you depend on. Xing is a closed network, I never happened to find my details posted elsewhere. Trust...

I'm happily paying monthly, I already had a great share of valuable contacts. All this is better than any other service available.

Posted by: NetFlexx | July 16, 2009 4:40 PM

That's it? The headline drew me in, but this article was completely vacant.

There was no demonstration of what Xing does. No screenshots. No link to descriptions of the platform. All you said was "In general terms, the platform is solid. The free functionality is more than adequate."

What platform? What functionality? If you're going to do a take-down of a service, there's got to be meat, and there's no meat here.

Posted by: Louis | July 16, 2009 4:41 PM

Louis, you should have a look at the 2nd clickable link...

Posted by: NetFlexx | July 16, 2009 4:48 PM

Louis,

As you can see in the post I linked to, we've already done a comprehensive review of the functionality of Xing before. Today was related solely to the new features they've added.

Posted by: Steven Walling | July 16, 2009 4:57 PM

Let's just say Xing is for us bloody europeans, linkedin for you stubborn americans. I guess we can both live with that. Please stop arguing about a service you have absolutely no idea about.

Posted by: NetFlexx | July 16, 2009 4:58 PM

Xing is a social software platform, so that a small network of professionals in the world.
The platform to provide personal information, groups, discussion forums, event coordination, common social and other social functions. The platform has a rigid use of HTTPS and privacy, no spam policy, and many other networking sites, to provide its members and to pay a very simple e-mail access to any member.

Xing is a competitor with the United States the LinkedIn platform networking between the business community.
Xing also offers a closed system communites, the so-called enterprise groups to visit their own path and interface design. The platform as a basis for the construction of enterprise groups, including IBM, McKinsey, Accenture and so on.

Posted by: Ricky | July 16, 2009 9:30 PM

Xing isn't a competitor with the United States the LinkedIn platform networking between the business community.

Because it dosen't enter into United States and China...

Posted by: bill | July 17, 2009 12:05 AM

I think Bernd (#2) already wrote the most important thing: You can't find new customers in an extensible way and without search or messaging. That's why you have to get a Premium account. I did.

Posted by: Stefan | July 17, 2009 12:32 AM

It's important XING move forward of course, but they seem to be delivering lots to their premium users already -- enough to get 8% of their total base paying for membership. Ecademy is at half that and I bet LinkedIn comes nowhere near it either.

If it wins them no more new premium members but reduces the churn of existing ones then as an update you could call it a success.

On another note, good to see the regional business networks getting mentioned on RWW.

Ian Hendry
CEO, WeCanDo.BIZ
http://www.wecando.biz

Posted by: Ian Hendry | July 17, 2009 9:43 AM

Your review is completely irrelevant.

I've been using XING for a couple of months before I decided to go premium.

None of the features you describe are actually relevant why (IMHO) the premium account is worth it.

My reasons:

* Search - you can search for a vast amount of keywords and types of them
* Statistics & Contact Management - you get quite some options with the paid account. The free account let's you indeed see how visited your site (and there are ways to find the people even without paying) but if you pay they're just a single click away. My time is worth more than investing a minute or more to find the person that looked at my profile
* Price Competition: Come on LinkedIn is way to expensive to even consider paying for it...
* Locality: Yes XING is mostly for europe, LinkedIn is practically non-existant in Europe. My question is therefore: Is LinkedIn worth it to pay for? The answer: It depends. You have to decide what gives you the most value, XING does it (for me).

I don't give sh** about any of the features you described as being "premium" They are just buzzword features for marketing just like LinkedIn has them to get some market share and some attention in the news.

Now go and start using XING for half a year with the free account and note down how many times you wanted to click the premium features. It's actually a perfect tradeoff.

* Just placing your CV online? - Free is perfect
* Occassional Contact Management? - Free may be enough
* Fast and efficient Contact Management? - Definitely go Premium, if your time is worth nothing, fine stay free you can work around the limitations. But my time is worth more than EUR 6 per month...

Posted by: serverhorror.wordpress.com | July 18, 2009 2:14 AM