Xing launches UK push for its business network
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by Mike Butcher on September 23, 2008

It’s interesting that Xing, the business social network which competes with LinkedIn has chosen now to launch a marketing campaign in the UK this week – probably something to do with the Adtech trade show on in London right now. There’ll be advertising on some 400 Xing billboards by major London Underground stations, ads in the Metro freesheet and online on at The Guardian, The Times, Sky News, Reuters and MSN Hotmail. Xing has about six million members worldwide and around half a million paying subscribers but till now it’s biggest base has been in Germany, and to a lesser extent, Asia. In the UK LinkedIn passed a million members a year ago, so Xing – which is now a floated company in Germany – has some catching up to do.

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  • daryl.griffiths - September 23rd, 2008 at 1:17 pm GMT-1

    Mike

    Whilst LinkedIn is undoubtedly reasonably well-subscribed, my personal feeling is that this is because it is pretty much the only player that anyone has heard of and due to the competition (in the UK certainly) being pretty dire.

    There are lots of things that LinkedIn does badly or not at all; it just doesn’t “flow” and just feels nasty to use.

    Anyone coming in to the UK market with a half-decent product stands a very good chance of knocking LinkedIn off the #1 position, especially for potential users with intra-UK contacts only (ie – doesn’t need to be big stateside).

    My two penneth worth, anyway.

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  • Ed - September 23rd, 2008 at 3:53 pm GMT-1

    As someone who uses both LinkedIn and Xing heavily (due to the need to do business in Germany and US and UK) it is not even close, Xing dominates in terms of features, especially as a pro user.

    On Xing I love that I can see who looked at my profile, and I love that I can get in touch with almost anyone.

    LinkedIn has stagnated and rested on their monopoly position in the US. Hopefully this will prompt them to innovate.

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  • Vlad - September 24th, 2008 at 8:48 pm GMT-1

    Ad:Tech London is filled with their junkvertising, they are the major sponsor and their stuff is everywhere. So yes, probably.

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  • Ian Hendry - October 2nd, 2008 at 2:06 pm GMT-1

    Xing has a strong base in Germany but also bought leading business networks in Spain and Turkey, so is well represented their too. 6 million users without the sort of boost that LinkedIn gets from a US centred press is pretty good going. Further, they appear to be a strong company according to their publicly available results.

    Both Xing and LinkedIn miss a lot of the tools people would like to help get them introduced to new contacts where they have needs/solutions in common though. We are hoping to mop up the SME market in this respect in particular.

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

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  • Prashant P - October 5th, 2008 at 8:02 pm GMT-1

    Have seen some of these billboards – not sure how effective this is going to be…why would people move away from LinkedIn? What does Xing have to offer? The Billboards don’t say.

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