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Basically the complaints are that since XING did an IPO (sold shares) they have put members in the back seat and focus on ways to raise profits even if those ways are not member-friendly. In this case with ads people noticed that ads for competitors turned up on your profile page, hardly what members want. XING did backtrack and created an opt-out for premium (paying) members who can select to drop ads. But the opt-out means many premium members will not notice and have to have the ads showing up.

Update from a post in the XING blog on January 6:

Since Saturday January 5, 2008, no online ads have been featured on any profiles of Premium Members. This is in response to the continuing feedback XING has received, which clearly shows that the majority of our Premium members do not wish to have online ads on their profiles when viewed by basic members. We very much regret that we misjudged the situation. And for this we would like to offer our apologies.

This move means that Premium Members are exempt from all advertising on the XING platform – both in terms of their own profile page and their general user experience on the XING platform. Basic members will continue to see ad banners on their start page, on profiles of other basic members, the search and search results pages, and other parts of the platform.

This means that premium members luckily are back to square one, no ads. And hopefully XING learned a lesson about how not to treat paying members.

Xing wrote this in the information they posted:

A new XING Shop has been established in response to the wishes and requests of our members. Starting tomorrow, you can purchase online pens, card carriers, t shirts, golf sets for your office and other nice things adorned with the XING logo.

The XING shop is not profit-motivated, but is rather an answer to the wishes of the XING Community for XING-related items. The assortment of items will expand based on user requests.

At the OpenBC blog it says Our dedication for the Spanish Market rises: Neurona joins XING.

Following our first acquisition of eConozco , with over 150,000 members, we now have a *huge number* of Spanish speaking business professionals in Spain and Latin America on the site, which indisputably makes us the market leader in the Spanish business networking market (on top of our already established market leadership in Germany).

Spanish can serve as an additional way into the US market. LinkedIn is in English only, now XING + Neurona will target another section of their home market.

ZoomInfo is a business information search engine that indexes the Business Web to quickly find information about industries, companies and people. The partnership will provide XING’s 2 million-plus members with immediate access to profiles on nearly 36 million business people and 3.8 million companies directly from the XING platform.

The integration between XING’s platform and ZoomInfo’s search engine is planned to go live in the fall of 2007. The entry into the US market is another step in the framework of the announced international expansion strategy of OPEN Business Club AG. The cooperation agreement with ZoomInfo represents the company’s first in North America.

I am a member of XING and this is a very interesting step forward. XING recently launched the Marketplace and now this step into the US market. The new partnership can give LinkedIn a harder competition in its home market. Guess I have to take a serious look at ZoomInfo…

Update.
I did check my own information at ZoomInfo, it turned out to be 7-8 years old. A search at Google would give much more and current information about me.

All XING users can view postings and search the Marketplace. Posters have the option of allowing postings to be accessed via Google.

Since Marketplace is an integrated part of XING you see who has posted a job offer. And once you click on a specific job offer XING shows how (if) you are connected to the person who posted it. The recommendation feature allows you to forward job openings to others within your network.

There is one search option, or filter, that I miss. I would like to be able to get only job offers posted in a specific language. At present you get them all.

In the OpenBC (the company behind XING) blog is a post titled Putting A Face To The Job: XING Marketplace.

Their presentation says:

openBLOG gives you the chance to get to know “the people behind XING”. Team members write about their experiences, new ideas and developments and give you an insight into the world of XING.