XING Launches OpenSocial-based Partner Ecosystem
August 12th, 2009 | Published in Google OpenSocial
Hello, my name is Matthias Häsel, and I am a Senior Product Manager at XING, the leading European online business network. Over 8 million members use XING in 16 languages to do business, find jobs, and further their careers. XING helps members find contacts and stay in touch with them with customized networking solutions and services.
It gives me great pleasure to announce the XING Partner Ecosystem to the OpenSocial community. XING’s members will benefit from a wide variety of partner applications on the XING platform, all made possible via OpenSocial.
XING’s partners are able to create applications using OpenSocial v0.8 and then easily integrate those applications into the XING professional network. The applications are firmly integrated into the core functionality of XING, using OpenSocial's People, Activities, and Notification services. The applications are thus able to leverage XING’s “business graph” of connections between professionals to make the applications engaging and rewarding for XING’s users.
What’s most exciting about the XING Partner Ecosystem is that it is a win-win-win for everyone involved:
- XING’s members win because they benefit from the useful applications we introduce for various specific user interests.
- XING’s partners win because their applications are made available to all of the users on the XING platform.
- XING wins because our service becomes more valuable to our members and partners.
We have 16 launch applications from 13 partners from 7 different countries, specifically Austria (ZCOPE), Canada (Tungle), Finland (Dopplr), Switzerland (Doodle), the UK (Huddle), the USA (SlideShare) and Germany (WELT online, Süddeutsche Karrierecamp, Wallstreet:online, DW-World, travelload, Mindmeister and Spreed, as well as our own applications).
The XING launch apps represent our focus on both locally relevant and globally valuable applications. We host many applications that function in multiple languages, as well as several apps that are specific to the German-speaking markets.
This is just the beginning. We will be adding more and more apps in the future.
Got an app that you think would be suitable for XING? Here are our guiding principles for getting new apps onto the XING platform.
- Open — we are open to launching anyone’s application if we believe it will provide user value. In the end, the XING users will decide which apps they prefer. So, we are OPEN for apps. Come one, come all, with your great applications!
- Professional — not just any application, but apps that are suitable for a professional network and that provide value to the business community in the markets we serve.
- Rewarding — apps that provide a return on time investment to our users.
Do you think your app idea meets our criteria? Visit our OpenSocial Partner Community to learn more.
But don’t just read about the apps. I encourage you to check them out - and give us your feedback on them! UserVoice has proved to be just the right tool for that. Simply click on the big button labeled “feedback” on the right side to give us your ideas and suggestions and to vote on them along with other XING members.
To learn more about the XING Partner Ecosystem, please visit: https://www.xing.com/opensocial.