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XING (named openBC/Open Business Club until November 2006) is a Hamburg-based career-oriented social networking site. The site is primarily focused on the German-speaking market, alongside XING Spain and XING S.à rl in Luxembourg.

XING competes with the American platform LinkedIn and the European site Viadeo.

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 from the D-A-CH area.

XING changed its legal status to become a Societas Europaea in September 2017.

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.

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.

Membership
The platform offers personal profiles, groups, discussion forums, event coordination and other social media features.

Registered users enter professional and private data in a profile, including their education, experience, and interests. Potential employers and collaborators can search for and contact users based on this information. Both parties must agree to all connections and the user decides who sees their information.

Basic membership is free, but some core functions, like advanced search or messaging, are paid-for. XING also offers public event calendars for various regions and themes. An appointment function can be used to organize private events. XING has an Ambassador program for each city or region that is home to a substantial number of users. Ambassadors hold local networking events. XING also offers a system for closed communities, called Enterprise groups, used by companies including IBM, McKinsey, Accenture.

Since March 2014, XING has charged Swiss customers significantly higher prices than customers in other countries, leading to criticism. Former members who have deleted their profiles have complained about receiving newsletters and email messages after closing their accounts.

Recuitment
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.